Tape Ain't Gonna Fix It
by shadowboxerbaby
Summary: Her favorite macaroons and silk stockings won't absolve him this time. Post 3x17.
1. Prelude

_Tape ain't gonna fix it, honey_

_It ain't gonna stick_

_6 kinds of glue_

_Won't hold you_

_- The Kills_

* * *

_"Nothing I would ever consider."_

He recites the line with conviction. It sounds good, he thinks. It sounds like the right thing to say -by which he means, it sounds like Nate.

_WWND?,_ Chuck asks himself from time to time, when he finds it convenient to play the golden boy. Now is one of those times.

Nate would have stormed out of the Empire, away from Jack without a backward glance.

But Chuck isn't Nate. He's not the hero and he's watching for Blair's reaction out of the corner of his eye. A mixture of happiness and pride plays across her face before she can reconstruct a neutral expression. Her relief is unconcealed. It's all he can do not to flinch.

He gave her the Nate Archibald answer and she didn't even recognize it; didn't even see that it wasn't the Chuck Bass answer. He wonders how she can so easily believe that he would walk away from Jack's offer without even broaching the subject with her.

Sometimes he doesn't recognize himself through her eyes. Sometimes he wonders when she went so blind, editing him into a good guy, pretending his most glaring flaws never existed at all. She used to call him a motherchucker and kick him in the shin, pull him by the hair. She used to assume that he was always working an angle. She used to trust him as far as her delicate little arms could throw him.

He thinks she was closer to the truth back then.

In moments like these, he can't help but fear that Blair secretly wants a Nate in disguise - not Nate himself, of course. Chuck knows better than that by now. He knows Blair's dirty secret - that Nate has always been too decent, too good to truly consume her. But, be that as it may, Chuck still worries – worries that Blair wants someone to play-act; wants someone who only seems dark, manipulative, and damaged; a white knight undercover.

Chuck isn't play-acting. Chuck is the real thing and he worries that she's forgotten that on purpose; that she doesn't really want it.

Still, he convinces himself that he's imagining the relief on her face. He convinces himself that Blair sees him and wants him and would understand everything if she knew. She would understand that refusing Jack's offer wasn't an option. Jack framed it as a choice between his girlfriend and his business, but Blair would understand that wasn't the choice at all. It wasn't a choice between keeping Blair or keeping the Empire. It was a choice between keeping Blair and the Empire or keeping nothing. If he loses the Empire, he loses Blair.

He is doing this to keep Blair.

Scratch that.

He can't pretend, even to himself, that this is entirely about Blair.

Which is not to say that she isn't a factor.

His identity is inextricably linked to the Empire now. When he imagines the permanent loss of the Empire, he imagines himself weak. Blair Waldorf hates all things weak. Blair Waldorf loves his confidence, his sense of entitlement, his ability to conquer anything he sets out to conquer. If he loses the Empire, he loses all of these things. And if he loses all of these things, he isn't Chuck Bass. And everyone in the Upper East Side knows that Blair Waldorf (for whatever godforsaken reason) loves Chuck Bass. If he isn't Chuck Bass, how can Blair Waldorf love him?

But he won't delude himself into romanticizing this.

He doesn't just want Blair. He wants Blair plus: Blair plus vindication; Blair plus revenge; Blair plus his fucking hotel – because it's his.

At his core, Chuck is a spoiled rich kid who hates to lose.

* * *

_"When are you going to get it? There is no way!"_

Yelling at her wasn't part of the plan, but he can't listen to another hopeful, comforting word about all of the ways "they" could fix this. She's wrong. She has to be wrong because, if she isn't, the ordeal he's already begun to put them through is an absolute waste and he's jeopardizing their relationship for nothing. He won't even entertain that concept.

A familiar heaviness settles in the pit of his stomach, making it difficult to breath, but he pushes forward. What choice does he have?

_"I am everything my father said I was."_

It's true. It's also one of the most manipulative statements he's ever made.

She fought her way into his confidence, one battle at a time. She earned the right to hear stories of childhood abandonments and secret insecurities. She treasures his vulnerability because it's hers and hers alone.

He knows this and so he exploits this.

He walks away from her, not only because it's the most effective time to leave but because the heaviness has suddenly become overwhelming.

He walks across the hall to the bathroom and locks the door, stares in the mirror, and imagines that he sees Bart staring back at him. Five minutes pass. Ten minutes pass. Fifteen minutes pass.

There's a soft knock on the door.

"Are you ok?"

"I'm fine." His voice is hoarse.

"Chuck …" Her voice matches his.

"I said I'm fine." He snaps. He manipulated her sympathy, but now he can't bear it.

He hears a sigh and the click of her Manolos as she walks away.

He rationalizes.

He would do it for her. He would do anything for her; do it for her in a heartbeat. Doesn't that make it ok? Sure, he would prefer to be consulted, but …

He thinks about the stunt she pulled a few months ago and the way her manipulation twisted in his gut.

_In order to be a team we need to focus our duplicity on others._

His own words haunt him.

But it isn't as if she hasn't been warned. She should know who he is by now. Didn't he tell her that trustworthiness wasn't his strong suit? Didn't he tell her up front that she deserved better? Didn't he write that part down? What the fuck was she thinking, promising to stand by him through anything?

He grasps at the memory of her words until they come back to him verbatim.

_The worst things you've ever done, the darkest thought you ever had_ … Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck.

If they weren't Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck … this might be irreparable. But they are what they are and they will be fine. He'll make it up to her - even if neither them ever acknowledge what it is that's being made up. She'll never tell him and he'll never tell her and they'll go on like tonight never happened.

He begins to unlock the door, but freezes as it occurs to him: Jack won't let that happen, won't let them forget. Jack will tell her, sooner or later.

Chuck imagines the look on her face when she comes home tonight, if she comes home knowing everything he knows.

The heaviness in his stomach multiplies.

Even if she comes home in blissful ignorance, he'll still have to tell her before Jack can.

Either way, she's bound to hate him in a few hours.

How long will take for him to fix this?

Her favorite macaroons and silk stockings won't absolve him this time.

What gift says, "Sorry I tricked you into sleeping with my uncle"?

Hallmark doesn't exactly make a card.

* * *

_"She's probably cheating."_

Serena's words trigger the certainty that cheating is exactly what Blair thinks this is. Blair probably feels guilty and he thinks the weight of this realization might push him through the floor.

He imagined Blair debating whether she could stand a night with Jack, whether she would be able to put it behind her, whether Chuck was worth it.

It hadn't occurred to Chuck that she might feel she was the one committing the act of betrayal.

Has she been agonizing all day over loyalty to him?

He has never felt slimier. And that's saying something.

He sprints upstairs, calling her name.

He isn't sure what he wants to say until he enters her room and is amazed to realize that, if he finds her, he's going to tell her everything.

She isn't there, of course. She's gone and the box is empty.

He could call. He could follow her to the Empire.

But, even though there's probably still time, it already feels too late.

* * *

He camps out in the hallway, waiting for her return, pondering this twisting and turning, this unbearably familiar heaviness he feels.

It's then that he's able to identify the source of his déjà vu, the other three times he's felt this way:

1. "Rode hard and put away wet"

2. "Can't make jet. Meet u in Tuscany."

3. "Stop trying to play the wife."

This is different though. This is worse.

Back then, she commanded armies; she was the Queen. She still had her minions and her claws. That was before _I love you too_ and _I'm not Chuck Bass without you_ and before he promised to make her happy _however that's achieved_. She let down her guard and she gave up her defenses. He knows because he enticed her to do it. He stole her armor and then sent her into combat. She is completely exposed.

It's too much. As a diversion, he experiments with anger.

How dare she be so easily manipulated? What happened to Blair Waldorf, fucking Queen B? The woman who would sooner scratch his eyes out than give an inch? Who is this woman he's waiting for now?

He always thought that he and Blair were two halves of the same, twisted whole. Sure, he was more fucked up, more spoiled, more cruel - but she was a crazy, bratty bitch herself. They matched. This willingness to lose though, this selflessness – it's just not in his DNA.

Unless it wasn't so selfless.

He catches a fleeting thought and holds onto it for dear life: what if she secretly wanted another go round with Jack? What if this was just her excuse? He latches onto this possibility. It feels like his ticket to exoneration. Maybe she isn't as domesticated as she seems. Maybe she's still perfectly capable of looking out for herself. Maybe all of this angst on his part has been a waste. He even manages to works himself into self-righteous indignation, telling himself he never thought she would actually visit Jack tonight.

"Home so soon?"

His delusions begin to fade the second he sees her face. He has never seen her look so utterly defeated. One glance tells him that she knows everything.

He was prepared for the hurt in her eyes, but not the disbelief.

"I didn't think that the worst thing you'd ever do would be to me."

How can she possibly be surprised? Falling in love with her may have made him a more respectable person, a more responsible person … but it didn't make him a different person. He's still a snake. Did she really think she could waltz through this relationship unbitten?

Despite his plan to apologize, he can't bring himself to say those two words, seven letters.

Of course he's sorry. But it just sounds too cliché in his head. And besides, the guilt building by the second is matched by something akin to devastation.

He is devastated at the growing conviction that the Chuck Bass who Blair Waldorf loves is not the Chuck Bass who is standing in front of her right now.

* * *

He can't fix what he broke if he can't find the pieces. He's been looking for days and he can't find them anywhere, but he has to keep going. He has to put it - the unidentifiable, precious thing he broke - back together. Elizabeth scolds Chuck because he was careless (and her face is so full of parental disappointment that Chuck forgets she isn't his real mother). Chuck never should have touched it in the first place, she says. It wasn't his to begin with. Even if Chuck finds the pieces, he won't be able to put it back together. Someone else will have to do that - someone who knows how to take care of valuable things. Elizabeth's words have the curious effect of triggering sobs.

Chuck wakes and finds that, to his horror, there are tears in his eyes. He blinks them away in confusion and reaches for Blair out of habit. She's not there.

Of course she's not there.

That's when he remembers kicking Jack out of the Empire and the sleeping pills he took after hours of pacing the penthouse.

The clock on his nightstand flashes 3:05AM.

He reaches for his cell and presses one on the speed-dial without thinking of anything beyond the need to hear her voice.

He hears the click when she answers, but there's no greeting.

"Blair …?" he whispers.

There is sniffling on the other end.

He wishes he could apologize, but the words stick in his throat and, anyway, they aren't magic words. They won't change anything.

Maybe he shouldn't have called, but he can't bring himself to hang up.

_3:11AM_

She hasn't said a word and he expects every second that she will hang up, but she stays on the line. She lets out little hiccups every minute or so, holding back sobs. He wonders if she's been crying all night.

He conjures up an image of her, lying in her silky bed with a box of tissues on one side and a box of chocolates on the other. He thinks he might hear the television very faintly in the background and he wonders if she is watching Breakfast at Tiffany's.

He hopes that Audrey has been consoling her in his absence.

_3:30AM_

The silence stretches on, but he takes comfort in her little noises. She can Goodbye, Chuck all she wants, but she belongs to him, just like he belongs to her (yes, Holly, he thinks, people really do belong to people). It doesn't matter whether she's here in his bed or at home in her own bed or halfway across the world.

She's still his.

And he's still hers.

He hopes that, in some small way, she takes comfort in his uneven breathing. At the very least, she now knows that it's dead silent where he is – that he isn't out partying with whores or snorting coke at Victrola like he would have been last year. She can infer that he wants to fix this. She can infer that he isn't letting her go. She can infer that -

"I love you." The words slip out before he can stop them.

He's not sure why he says them. He knows that these words are no more magic than "I'm sorry." But they've worked so hard for these three words, eight letters - the two of them together have been through war to claim those words as their own. What was the point of all that if not so he could say them in a moment like this?

She shouldn't have to infer those words anymore.

He isn't really expecting a response, so her unrestrained sobs catch him off guard. The noise is quickly muffled and he guesses that she is covering the receiver with her blanket or pillow or hand. He wishes she wouldn't bother. Listening to her cry feels like penance and he doesn't want it sugar coated.

Sugar coated penance never brought anyone absolution.

"I do love you, Blair." He's not sure if it's the right thing to say, but he finds himself rasping the words again.

She continues crying, but she doesn't hang up.

"I just don't understand," he thinks he hears her choke out.

He doesn't have an explanation right now. Not a good one.

But she wasn't really talking to him anyway.

_3:55AM_

As her sobs subside into whimpers, he hears her take a breath as if to say something, but the words never come.

He's relieved. If she said anything, it would probably be goodbye and he's not ready to lose contact yet.

Still, he thinks that she might be exhausted enough to rest.

"I'm not hanging up ... but you should sleep."

It's so perfectly silent that isn't sure she's still there, but then he hears the rustle of sheets and takes that as acceptance.

It isn't long before her hitched breath becomes deep and even.

_6:01AM_

Lulled to sleep by her breathing, he starts awake at the beeping in his ear.

The connection has been severed.

Her phone might have died, he supposes. But he thinks it's more likely that she woke up and, in light of day, ended the call, disgusted with herself for taking it in the first place.


	2. Chapter 2

_Combat, baby_

_Come back, baby_

_Fight off the lethargy_

_Don't go quietly_

_You said you would never give up easy_

_- Metric_

* * *

The weight of the silence in his suite is crushing.

When he used to take women back to the Palace, he never forgot to casually mention an early appointment, night terrors, insanely strict parents, a girlfriend … anything to get rid of them by dawn.

He was incapable of falling asleep with someone else in his bed. Sleep felt intimate (unlike sex); the very idea of sharing it with someone made his skin crawl.

What was he supposed to do? Roll over and pretend no one was there? Or, more ridiculous yet, cuddle? Chuck Bass didn't cuddle (not until the night of Blair Waldorf's seventeenth birthday party, anyway).

Of course, every once in awhile women refused to take the hint (or he drunkenly passed out before he could show them the door). Then he was faced with the unpleasant task of dealing with them in the morning.

Kicking them out wasn't the worst part though. The worst part was tolerating their brief intrusion into his solitude.

Chuck fundamentally preferred to be left alone. How could he prefer anything else? Silence was the dominant sound of his early childhood. He had no siblings. Bart only spoke to him in lectures. His nannies were all terrified of him - by the age of four, he had learned to manipulate the termination of any Bass employee who crossed him and so, like the rest of the staff, his nannies walked on eggshells, never saying too much for fear of saying the wrong thing. He didn't mind isolation though. He had nothing to compare it to until Nate came along.

Nate taught him to enjoy companionship.

But Blair is the one is who ruined his taste for solitude.

He knows the exact day this destruction began. He remembers because it was May 19th, a date he has dreaded every year since he was old enough to understand its significance. This particular May 19th was the summer between 6th and 7th grade, back when it was still mostly Nate-and-Chuck; Serena-and-Blair.

He isn't sure when the full nexus of their friendships formed because he doesn't know exactly when Nate-and-Serena happened (though he has a few guesses). He isn't even really sure when Chuck-and-Serena happened (their friendship has been so gradual and uneven). But one thing he knows for certain is when Chuck-and-Blair happened. May 19th, 2003, he thinks, was the beginning of Chuck and Blair as an independent entity.

_The sun was too bright, the music was too saccharine, everyone was running around yelling and squealing, and, even back then, Chuck didn't do bright and saccharine and running around. Especially not on May 19th. He slipped away from the beach party Nate had insisted upon throwing to celebrate the end of the school year. While Nate and Serena were distracted with their fourth or fifth game of volleyball, Chuck wandered along the beach and back into the shade until he couldn't see or hear the party anymore._

_Eventually Blair stumbled over his hiding place, presumably in her own escape from bright/saccharine/running around._

_"Ugh, it's so hot, I could absolutely -" she stopped short when she saw his face. "What's wrong?"_

_He shook his head, not even looking up at her. He expected his best friend's girlfriend to either push for an answer or shrug and walk away. He did not expect her to sit down next to him and begin drawing patterns in the sand._

_After a few minutes, he picked up a rock and threw it towards the ocean. She followed suit, then concentrated on burying her feet in the sand._

_He was surprised to find that he didn't mind the company. It dawned on him that, unlike Nate and Serena, Blair never seemed to feel the need to fill silence with meaningless words. Even when she chattered, she rarely said anything she didn't intend to say. And she knew when not to say anything at all._

_"Today's my birthday." He had no idea why he suddenly felt compelled to share this information. When he glanced up, he found her brow creased in confusion._

_"I didn't know it was your birthday." She said carefully, searching his face._

_"No one does."_

_A minute or two slipped by, in which she picked up another stone and rubbed all of the sand off of it before throwing it as far as she could._

_"Don't tell, ok?" He meant to say it as a command, but it came out as a plea._

_"Why not?" She demanded a reason for this strange request._

_He decided that 'because thirteen years ago today, I killed my mother' was the sort of response that would send Blair Waldorf running back to Nate Archibald and, for some reason, he wanted her to stay. Besides, sharing that particular secret with anyone didn't seem like an option._

_"Because… I don't want anyone to know." He finally offered, hoping it was a good enough reason._

_She spent another minute appraising him and then apparently decided it was, indeed, a good enough reason, because she nodded and offered her pinky so she could swear. He rolled his eyes, but participated in the ritual._

_He was lost in his own thoughts by the time she spoke again._

_"Did you want to be alone?"_

_"No." His reply was more adamant than he intended, so he added an indifferent shrug. "I mean … yeah … but …"_

_She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to finish his sentence._

_"I can be alone with you."_

* * *

That was when he began to gravitate towards her, if only for the relief of shared silence. It's not like that made them best friends or anything (not yet anyway). But every May 19th after that, Blair has found him and, by way of acknowledging the day of his birth, ceremonially renewed her pinky swear. He always rolls his eyes, but then squeezes her tiny finger a little longer than necessary, silently thanking her for remembering and for not saying 'happy birthday.' As far as he knows, she never broke her promise.

After being alone with Blair almost every day for the past year, he finds that he has lost his taste for true solitude.

It isn't as if he spent every waking moment of the past eleven months with her. It isn't as if he fell asleep next to her every single night. But, now, countless mornings without her stretch before him indefinitely … and he finds it impossible to fathom the prospect.

He showers and dresses as quickly as he possibly can. He fastens the cufflinks Blair got him for Christmas ("You're the only man I know who could pull off diamond encrusted, amethyst cufflinks." she had laughed) and walks straight out the door without so much as a glance around his empty suite.

* * *

He takes refuge in the buzz of the emergency board meeting his lawyer scheduled last night.

He knows his victory should be tainted beyond repair, but he can't help savoring the leather chair he is current sitting in, the coffee his secretary just handed him, the looks of terror on the faces of the board members who supported Jack (he will fire most of them by the end of the week, but he wants to make them sweat first). He relishes the scratch of his pen across the signature line of documents that solidify his return.

The thrill of power is a more euphoric high than chemical substances or meaningless sex ever brought him.

Hard drugs hold very little appeal anymore. Chuck spent most of his adolescence in varying degrees of altered states, but, lately, his body rebels at the very thought of calling his dealer. Seven years of abuse is enough, apparently. It's not only the rolling in his stomach though. Mostly he has just lost his taste for dulled senses and erratic behavior. He gave it up for Bass Industries. He gave it up for Blair. But, to his surprise, he has found that he doesn't miss it. He still smokes up on occasion, but those occasions have become few and far between.

As for meaningless sex …

He can't truthfully say that he completely stopped noticing other women when he finally committed to Blair. He lives in New York City, after all, and he hasn't gone blind. He is surrounded by gorgeous women on a daily basis. He would be lying if he said that he doesn't even notice the way they look at him: as if his reputation precedes him. He knows that his sexual conquests remain the stuff of Upper East Side legends.

_Chuck was still fifteen when Gossip Girl speculated that his number must already be in the 40's. When he bragged/confessed that it was actually higher, Serena raised an eyebrow in disbelief and Blair wrinkled her nose in disgust. Nate's initial response (laughter) died with a withering glare from the Queen._

_"You think that's funny?" the question was rhetorical, but Nate shook his head anyway, clearly anxious to escape Blair's displeasure._

_Chuck caught the look that Nate immediately exchanged with Serena though – the 'everyone-but-us-is-crazy' look they were sharing with increasing frequency those days. The look irritated him. Nate and Serena's bond had taken on a new tone lately. That was one thing. It was another thing that the two seemed determined to flaunt their deepened connection at every opportunity._

_Chuck glanced past the blondes. Blair's disgust had withered. She was looking at Nate and Serena with an expression he couldn't quite identify. She averted her eyes when she felt Chuck looking at her. She stared at her shoes and pretended that she didn't know her best friend and her boyfriend were sharing a moment._

_Whatever the look on Blair's face meant, Chuck felt the inexplicable need to erase it, to minimize the significance of whatever was happening in front of them. He caught her eye and silently directed her gaze to Heather Highlander, who had fortuitously chosen to wear the most ridiculous outfit ever assembled that day._

_Blair burst out with a genuine laugh when she followed his eyes. Nate and Serena broke eye contact, confused, as usual, when it came to Blair's mood._

_"So, what is the magic number, Bass?" Blair asked, stepping down off her moral high horse to effectively pour a bucket of cold water on the unresolved sexual tension still lingering in the air._

_"I wouldn't want to shock your delicate sensibilities, Waldorf." He smirked, happy to play along. "Let's just say that I'm not sure you can count that high."_

_"You're vile."_

_But she returned his smirk._

So, yes, thanks in part to Gossip Girl, his sexual appetite is infamous and, despite months of fidelity, women still regularly approach him, looking for proof of the rumors they've heard.

But, if he's being honest, one night stands hold even less appeal than drugs at this point. He wracks his brain for the last time he was legitimately tempted to sleep with someone other than Blair and comes up empty. To his own amazement, the very idea of sex with anyone else has become repugnant.

Work is the only refuge he has left.

Unfortunately, the power high fades almost as soon as he steps out of the board room.

He considers calling Blair again. It's only noon though and he thinks (hopes) she might still be sleeping off yesterday's emotional exhaustion. Besides, she probably wouldn't take his call anyway. And he needs to come up with the perfect approach. And he should give her the chance to decide how she wants to begin evening the scales. Maybe he shouldn't even approach her until she's gotten a few punches in.

(All of which translates to the fact that he is terrified and stalling.)

He has business calls he could make and paperwork he could do, but that's not enough of a distraction and he feels like he might spontaneously combust if he doesn't come up with some way to ease this tension in his stomach.

He flees the office and tells his driver to take a lap around the city before dropping him back home.

"The whole city?"

"Yes, the whole fucking city." Chuck snaps. "Start driving."

Turns out, he has no healthy coping mechanisms. Not that this really comes as a surprise, but it seemed less problematic when his friends were all equally self destructive.

Serena used to chase a handful of pills with a bottle of Petron, stumble onto the dance floor with Georgina, and then stumble home with whatever flavor-of-the-minute caught her eye. Sometimes she would call Chuck when her dealer was out of town. Once or twice, they snorted lines together and then picked up Nate and Blair for evenings that seemed phenomenal at the time, but, in retrospect, probably weren't that much fun for the non-coked-up couple. Chuck has a hazy recollection of Blair pulling him back from the edge of the balcony at a random club (she is forever pulling him off ledges) and Nate carrying Serena to the limo after she twisted her ankle somehow.

But that was before Serena became a canonized saint. His step-sister still has a bad habit of disappearing when the going gets tough (to boarding school, to South America, to Europe … to Brooklyn), but now she mostly just takes endless bubble baths and throws herself headfirst into the latest exercise craze. The model-thin blonde normally isn't much for working out ("_She doesn't even diet,_" he remembers Blair snorting once, eyeing her friend with undisguised jealousy). But they always know something has gone seriously wrong in Serenaland when they find her in sweats and a sports bra, carrying a yoga mat or a Pilates band or a belly dancing scarf or (only once, but he and Nate will never let her forget it) a hula hoop.

Nate used to run around the park until he couldn't run anymore. He used to play soccer until he collapsed in exhaustion. Chuck remembers watching Nate shoot hoops for four hours straight one day after a fight with the Captain – and by "watching," Chuck means alternately downloading music videos on his phone and plotting some freshman's social destruction with Blair, who insisted that she would stay at the park until Nate was ready to talk. Nate barely looked at her when he was finished though, just raised his eyebrows in a silent question to Chuck. As always, Chuck was ready with a bag of the finest weed money could buy. Nate used to smoke himself into oblivion and then let Chuck fly him to Vegas or Monaco for the weekend, where the two would gamble with their trust funds.

But Chuck can't recall the last time he smoked up with Nate and he doesn't care to recall the last time they were in Monaco together _("Don't worry, B. Who would I tell?"_). Chuck's best friend still goes for runs, but then he goes to the movies by himself (usually war, but sometimes thriller), sitting in the dark until the world makes sense again. He still plays soccer, but then he goes to a coffee shop and reads a newspaper (usually sports and leisure, but sometimes the international section), until his problems seem a little less significant. He still plays basketball, but then he clears his head with a long walk and calls Serena.

Blair used to …

Chuck carefully sidesteps the memory of what Blair used to do, telling himself that he never knew for sure.

_The night before starting their sophomore year of high school, the four of them went out to dinner downtown. Nate gave Blair an obligatory kiss at the beginning of the evening, but was otherwise inattentive, as was increasingly common. Blair sat through the meal in silence as Nate and Serena chatted animatedly. She was pushing her food around her plate, but Chuck had yet to see her actually take a bite. Halfway through the meal, she gave up the pretense and focused on smoothing her skirt._

_"Prada?" Chuck asked._

_"Yes." Blair sighed, presumably at the fact that Nate hadn't noticed her new purchase._

_Chuck nodded in approval, strangely compelled to alleviate the sting of Nate's neglect. But Blair's smile only lasted a few seconds and never reached her eyes._

_"Do you want to order something else?" he asked quietly when Nate and Serena were preoccupied with their own conversation._

_"What?" She looked up in confusion._

_"Your food. Don't you like it?"_

_"No, I do." Her tone became defensive when she saw his expression. She picked up her fork again and took a tiny bite._

_"It's good." Nate laughed out loud at a story Serena was telling and Blair took a bigger bite. "It's great, actually."_

_As Nate and Serena continued to laugh, Blair began cutting into her steak with something like resolve. Chuck watched in confusion as she emptied her plate in a matter of minutes and then hurriedly excused herself._

_Nate didn't notice …_

But that was the first time Chuck suspected. There have been other incidents to confirm his suspicions, but Chuck chooses not to dwell on them now. Blair's body image issues are mysterious and terrifying to him – which is maybe why he's never directly broached the subject with her. Instead, he has spent the past year telling her that she's perfect (if a tad too skinny), paying attention to how much she eats (sometimes staring her down until she picks up her fork), and silently evaluating the timing of her trips to the lady's room. He thinks that any problems she may have had are in the past.

He's pretty sure.

The point is that Blair has her Sunday-morning-croissants-and-Audrey-Hepburn ritual, created when her parents took off for Europe without her one summer. Blair has Bergdorf's and Tiffany's, where she wanders and engages in retail therapy. She has Jennifer Behr headband catalogues and the latest Vogue, the pages of which she devours when something is bothering her. She has the ducks in Central Park. Blair has her black and white dreams to help her work through her problems.

And what does Chuck have without Blair?

Bass Industries, Victrola, and the Empire.

Concrete and steel.

* * *

The sun has already set by the time he arrives back at his suite.

He has decided that he needs to come up with the right gift before he can even think about going to see Blair. The goal isn't finding something appropriate (he knows that's impossible), just something that won't be insulting. He can't stand the thought of showing up empty handed, but he cringes at the memory of the pathetic flowers that ultimately landed at his feet in her elevator.

_"Jack set me up."_

_"You have no one to blame but yourself."_

Over a year later and the words are, once again, sickeningly applicable. How did he let them get back here?

He walks straight to the bar and begins pouring himself a glass of scotch, but is interrupted by a heavy knock.

"Chuck! We know you're here." Nate's voice follows the ding of the elevaotr.

Enter the golden boy. And the only possible "we" in this scenario includes Serena.

Fantastic.

Chuck finishes pouring his drink and braces himself for the visit he knew would come sooner or later. He was hoping it would be later.

If this is the first phase of his punishment from Blair, he's more than willing to take it, but losing all three of the people he cares most about in less than 24 hours feels something like disaster. He supposes Eric and Lily will know soon enough too. He will have no one left.

Even so, the dread building in his chest is tinged with relief. At least she's fighting back and going straight for the kill. That's the Blair he knows.

Atta girl, Waldorf.

"What the hell did you do?" Nate yells the second he comes into view.

Nate looks every inch the champion - sleeves rolled up, chiseled jaw thrust forward, fists clenched. Not for the first time, Chuck thinks that Serena is Nate's perfect match. She stands beside her boyfriend, looking like Lady Justice and a Disney princess rolled into one, all sweetness and light except for her eyes, which are blazing with barely restrained rage.

He wishes Blair could see this. He feels the strange urge to take a picture for her. Nate and Serena, who have let Blair down time and again have finally come through when she needs them. For once, they are the ones fighting for her.

"Good evening to you too, Nathaniel … Sis."

"Do not call me that." Serena's voice is unnaturally low.

"Well, you got the Empire back." The blonde boy makes a wide gesture, underscoring their presence in the hotel.

"I did."

"And how, exactly, did you manage that?" Nate demands.

Chuck looks at the floor, assuming that the question is rhetorical.

"What did you do?" Nate repeats his unanswered question, louder this time.

Chuck looks up in confusion.

"She hasn't told us." Serena glares daggers at him.

Somehow that changes everything.

If Nate and Serena haven't been sent as instruments of Blair's revenge, then Blair has let the entire day slip by without a single attack.

He struggles to stifle his mounting unease. It's only been one day. She's probably just trying to lull him into a false sense of security.

"If she hasn't told you, then what exactly is it that you think know?"

"I know that you're mysteriously back in your suite at the Empire. I know that Blair has locked herself in her room and won't even let Dorota in. I know -"

"Dorota hasn't been in all day?" Chuck interrupts Serena.

That means Blair hasn't eaten today and Chuck would be surprised if she ate anything yesterday - he certainly hasn't been able to stomach the thought of food since his meeting with Jack yesterday morning. But when Chuck skips meals, it's a footnote. When Blair skips meals, it's a warning sign.

"No, Dorota hasn't been in. No one has." Serena's fury dies down as she searches Chuck's face. He searches hers back and arrives at the conclusion that they both know why this seemingly trivial detail is significant.

"And we know what Jack told us." Nate picks up Serena's tirade where she left off, oblivious to the silent communication he has just missed.

"Jack?" Chuck growls.

"He stopped by this afternoon. He said he wanted to make sure Blair was ok – that she's been through an 'ordeal' and we should ask you about it."

Chuck wonders how long it would take for him to suffocate Jack with his bare hands.

"So, I'm going to ask you one more time." Nate says slowly. "What did you do?"

Chuck meets Nate's eyes and finds that his friend looks almost hopeful. Nate has always been so eager to see the best in everyone, even Chuck. His thoughts are practically audible: Maybe it isn't as bad as we think. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding.

"That's between Blair and me."

Nate's face falls, probably inferring (correctly) that whatever Chuck has done is too awful to repeat.

"She trusted you, Chuck." Nate sighs, defeated. "I've never seen her trust anyone the way she trusted you."

"Then you weren't paying attention." Chuck mutters.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that you two are a joke." He knows that he has no right to lash out, but he spits the words anyway. "You come here, all self righteous and ready to throw stones at me for hurting Blair? That's fine. I deserve it. But don't pretend I'm the only person in this room to ever violate Blair's trust."

To their credit, both have the decency to drop their eyes.

"All the more reason why Blair deserves better." Nate finally mutters.

He's got Chuck there.

"We just wanted you to know that we know." Serena says in the same quiet but lethal voice she's been using since she arrived. "The details don't really matter. We know that Blair is in pain. And we know that you're responsible – again." She hits the last word hard, twists it. "And we won't forget. Even if Blair does, we won't. We'll be there to remind her."

"I hardly think that will be necessary." Chuck mutters. He dares to hope that Blair will forgive him someday, but he knows better than to think she will ever forget.

"I hope not," Serena says "because you're not good for her. You told me that you couldn't make her happy and I didn't listen. But you were right. "

She tosses out his greatest fear as parting words and then pulls Nate with her out the door.

He finishes his drink, waiting to hear the elevator doors close.

When he's sure that Nate and Serena are gone, he follows them out.

Chuck has absolutely no faith in their ability to convince Blair to open her door. He's not delusional enough to think that he has a better shot of getting in right now. But he knows someone who does.

Though she is loath to use it against Blair's orders, Dorota has a spare key, and Chuck has developed something of an expertise in sweet talking Dorota (and in bullying her, when necessary). It shouldn't be too difficult to convince the maid to check on Blair, bring her some food, make sure she's ok.

He starts to call his driver, but decides he doesn't want to wait. He'll take a cab.

Fragile is not a word that he associates with Blair.

Fierce, Spirited, Resilient …

These are the words that played around the fringes of his mind when he agreed to Jack's offer.

But, strong as she wants to seem – strong as she is – there are infinitely breakable layers just beneath the surface of the indomitable shell Blair exposes to the world. She's no damsel in distress. Blair is the most resourceful, competent person he has ever known. It's only when she lets someone past her shell that she becomes vulnerable. The list of people who have made it that far is short: her parents, Nate, Serena … and Chuck.

When it comes to these people, Blair is the very definition of the word fragile.

But he didn't fucking think about that when he pawned her for a hotel, did he?


	3. Chapter 3

_What I am to you is not real_

_What I am to you, you do not need_

_What I am to you is not what you mean to me_

_You'll give me miles and miles of mountains_

_And I'll ask for the sea._

_- Damien Rice_

* * *

She doesn't respond until after the third knock.

"Go away."

Blair can express hundreds of shades and shadows with her voice. Chuck's default is slow and raspy, but Blair has no default. She's bright and clipped; she's low and silky. She's shrill and then she's flat. Her cruelty is unhurried and deliberate, but her affection is lilting; she purrs. She can span an octave in the course of a sentence. She goes from butterscotch to sour cherries, warm to sharp in the same breath.

But right now, her voice communicates nothing. He has never heard it so toneless.

"You see, Mr. Chuck?" Dorota whispers.

"Will you just use the key?" He hisses back.

Dorota shifts the tray of food she is carrying to one arm and looks up at him with sympathy, confirming his suspicion that she knows nothing.

Dorota has always been kind to him. She has heard too much to trust him (she's had access to Gossip Girl for years) and she has observed too much to approve of him exactly (she's caught his indiscretions - from blowjobs in the kitchen to blow on the balcony - at more than one of Blair's parties). But, against her better judgment, Dorota likes him. He can see it in looks like the one she is giving him now: she is secretly rooting for him.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that Dorota would spit in his face if she knew even half as much about last night as Nate and Serena. The sky is blue and Dorota would walk through fire for Blair. Before Chuck could recite the alphabet or count to 100, he knew that Blair's nanny worshipped the ground Blair's tiny Burberry flats stomped on.

It is perhaps this unswerving devotion to Blair that finally causes Dorota to nod.

Before he can decide whether or not to leave, Dorota is pulling out the key and turning it in the lock.

He hasn't found the perfect gift. He hasn't come up with the magical speech that will make this all ok. When the door swings open, his hands are empty and his mind is blank. He can't seem to move, so he hangs back in the hall as Dorota crosses the threshold.

"I told you to go away." The Blair he knows would be on her feet, shrieking these words. This Blair remains seated at her vanity, staring vacantly at herself. She doesn't bother to inject her words with emotion; she barely glances away from the mirror.

"You must eat something, Miss Blair." Dorota fusses, as she sets the tray on Blair's dresser and begins pouring tea.

"I'm not hungry."

Even as Chuck wills his feet to carry him downstairs and out of the house before Blair can spot him, she turns her head and looks out into the hall.

Her eyes scan his face. At first, there is no change in her expression. If she is surprised to see him, she gives no indication. but then there is a dim flash of anger. It's weak, but it's there. It's not the emotion he would choose to see on Blair's face, but he feels a wave of relief to see any emotion at all.

"I'm not ready to see you." An edge creeps into her voice.

She stands up and walks away from the vanity, putting distance between herself and Chuck.

"Blair, I just ..." At a loss for words, he take a step inside.

He has crossed this threshold uninvited countless times since the beginning of their junior year (_"So, this is your bed, huh?"_), but this is the first time it has felt like an invasion, so he hovers near the entrance, reluctant to push any further.

"I'm not ready for this." She moves another pace away from him.

He takes in her red eyes and colorless skin, her flat hair. She is wearing wrinkled green silk pajamas and a white silk robe and, no, she isn't ready for this. This is not how Blair Waldorf goes into battle. Blair goes into battle with a perfectly pressed dress and carefully applied make-up and a headband holding her curls in place.

It was too soon to come, he thinks. He should have left when Dorota agreed to open the door.

"Ok." He finally nods.

"Ok?" She looks up in relief. "Really?"

"If you're not ready, you're not ready." He runs a hand over his face. "I just wanted to make sure …"

He doesn't know how to end the sentence without violating their unspoken pact to pretend her disorder doesn't exist.

He finds himself wandering further inside, trying to come up with the right words.

That's when he spots a pile in the corner of the room. At first all he sees is one of his spare suits, several ties, and his old scarf (the one he gave her as a mea culpa at the beginning of their senior year). But then, he makes out various books he has left here over the years: the copy of _Wealth of the Nations_ he just finished; a psychics textbook he forgot after one of their many secret trysts junior year (he didn't even realize it was missing until exams came around, but exams were after cotillion and he couldn't bring himself to ask for it back then); the book he pretends is his favorite (_Choke_); the book that is actually his favorite (_The Sun Also Rises_); _The Stories of Vladmir Nabokov_ …

_It was three days since Bart and Lily's wedding; two days until the trip to Tuscany that never happened._

_When it fell out of his bag, he told her it was for school._

_"Pretend summer school?" She arched an eyebrow, picking up the book._

_If he hadn't been so distracted by her tiny Chanel dress, he would have come up with a better lie. As it was, he played off his misstep with a shrug and then pulled her back toward the bed, lips already traveling down her neck. He inched her zipper in the direction of the floor, slowly trailing open mouthed kisses to the spot behind her ear that, once found, never failed to make her knees fold. He waited for her to let out a soft moan before reaching for the book._

_"Uh uh …" She pulled back, a little breathless but still determined, and held the book above her head. "Why don't you want me to see this?"_

_"I don't care if you see it." He bluffed. "What I care about is the fact that I spent all day not touching you and now we're finally alone and I'm still not touching you because you're obsessing over Nabokov."_

_"It's just interesting." She continued backing away, flipping through the pages. "You have parts underlined … you have pages marked … and, for the record, I believe that Lolita is the only Nabokov St. Jude's assigns, even when school is actually in session."_

_"What's your point, Nancy Drew?"_

_" I'm just curious…" She continued turning the pages. "What does Chuck Bass read for pleasure?"_

_"__You have exactly ten seconds before I walk over there and give you a full demonstration of what Chuck Bass does for pleasure. I'll give you a hint. It's not reading."_

_He silently willed her to drop it, but she grinned and took another step back._

_"Ten …" He warned._

_It was then that she discovered a book mark masquerading as a Victrola business card. He was across the room before she could react._

_"Nine …" He made one last grab for the book, but she spun out of his reach, scanning the page that had been marked until her eyes landed on underlined words._

_" 'It was love at first touch-" She began triumphantly, but stopped short and turned to look at him in surprise when the meaning of the words caught up to their sound._

_"'It was love at first touch rather than at first sight…'" she started again, this time in a very different voice._

_His face suddenly felt warm, though he had no idea why. It wasn't as if he himself had written the words. And, no, the book wasn't for school, but it wasn't some dreamy impulse that had inspired him to grab it from (a very dusty corner of) Bart's study. Skimming it had started out as last minute research for his best man's speech. So, there was a perfectly practical reason why Chuck was carrying Nabokov around (if not for why he had underlined the words Blair was now reading)._

_It wasn't as if he had scribbled "Blair" in the margin …_

_… but the look on her face told him that he may as well have._

_He could still have easily pulled the book out of her hands, but the battle of the book was effectively lost. A barrier had been breached. There was no unbreaching it. _

_He felt the desperate need to regain some modicum of control._

_Luckily for him, Blair's greatest weakness was perhaps her overly developed sensibility. Her guard was lowest when she believed his to be lowest. So, he swallowed the raw exposure pulsing in his throat, secure in the knowledge that he could turn the tables before he got to ten._

_"Eight …" He rasped, walking up behind her and pushing the unzipped dress off her shoulders._

_" '…for I had met her several times before without experiencing any special emotions...' "_

_When she continued reading, her voice was wistful. Chuck's romantic streak was closeted ("Chuck Bass is a romantic, who knew?"), but Blair's was almost palpable … and easily manipulated._

_"Seven …" He matched her tone and ran his hands up her now bare back to her shoulders._

_"'…but one night, as I was seeing her home, something quaint she had said made me stoop with a laugh and lightly kiss her on the hair …"_

_"Six …" he pressed his lips to Blair's curls. For a moment, he worried that the gesture was too much, too literal, but then she leaned into the caress._

_Gotcha, Waldorf._

_"'… and of course we all know of that blinding blast which is caused by merely picking up a small doll from the floor of a carefully abandoned house. The soldier involved hears nothing …'"_

_"Five …" He lifted her hair to kiss the nape of her neck and smiled against her skin when he heard her breath catch._

_"… for to him it is but an ecstatic, soundless, and boundless expansion of what had been, during his life …"_

_"Four …" He whispered as one hand slid across her stomach to her hip, preparing to turn her._

_"… a pinpoint of light in the dark center of his being."_

_He could practically see the picture she was sketching in her head: Chuck-as-Byronic-Hero. From what he could make out, the sketch didn't bear even a slight resemblance to reality. But, since it was the sketch and not the reality that had transformed Blair into the guileless woman arching into his hands, he found it convenient to play the part._

_The novelty of Blair in total surrender mode was almost worth the price of faux vulnerability. Almost._

_"Three …" He found her eyes shining when he spun her to face him._

_He reached for the book one last time and she handed it over willingly._

_"… two, one." She finished the count-down for him, wrapping her arms around his neck and reaching for his lips._

_Victory._

_Chuck decided that, if she brought it up again later, he would tell her that he only had the book because Nabokov was Bart's favorite author (which he suspected was true) and that the underlining was Bart's (which was false) and that she was flattering herself if she thought she was even remotely associated with the word "love" in his mind (the truth or falsity of which he chose not to contemplate at that moment)._

_Of course, she never brought it up again. He didn't give her a chance. Instead, he left her on a helipad. _

_By the time they got to "say it and I'm yours," underlined words in some book weren't good enough anymore._

Next to the clothing and books is a heap of jewelry boxes and other gifts he has given her.

He stoops down to pick up the Erickson Beamon necklace, lying a few inches from its open case (as if having landed there after being thrown). His chest constricts at the sight of the birthday present lying there, discarded.

"I'm getting rid of some things." She's making an effort at detachment, but a slight quiver in her voice undoes the whole effect. "You can take your stuff if you want it."

He doesn't respond - he is too busy carefully tucking the Erickson Beamon necklace back in its case and hoping that this is all for show, that she would never actually part with these things. She knew that he would be here eventually and so she assembled these things to hurt him. This is what he hopes.

"I'm tired, Chuck." She interrupts his thoughts. "And I just told you I'm not ready to talk."

"I just wanted to make sure that …"

He begins the same sentence again, still pacing.

He stops mid stride as he approaches her en suite bathroom. The smell of vomit is unmistakable, overpowering. He almost gags (not so much at the smell as at the implication).

She doesn't miss his reaction. Sheer mortification flashes across her face before she can cover it with a dispassionate mask. She wraps her robe more tightly around herself and meets his eyes defiantly.

"Make sure that what?" She lifts her chin, daring him to say something.

But what is there to say?

Now that his fears are confirmed, he feels so helpless he just wants to lie down on the floor and never get up. He wants to fall at her feet and make her tell him what to do, what gesture to make, what words to use to fix this.

So much of their relationship has always been implicit. So much is left undeclared and yet still understood _("The reason we can't say those three words to each other isn't because they aren't true."_) So much is communicated in silence and their own shorthand language (_"Are you sure?_"). But now shorthand isn't good enough and he doesn't know the right thing to say.

So, he doesn't say anything.

And he pretends not to notice when she uses her foot to push two empty boxes of chocolates under her bed, out of sight.

He doesn't call her out because he didn't come here to hurt her pride.

That's a lie.

He doesn't call her out because he didn't come here to have his image of her pride shattered.

He is letting himself off the hook by telling himself that Blair Waldorf is self sufficient. Blair Waldorf wouldn't binge on an entire box of Godiva's Gold Collection just to make herself throw up it up and then start in on another box.

And, if even if she did, Blair Waldorf wouldn't want him to know.

She would handle it herself.

There are things that are too intensely personal to bear his intrusion, he thinks. He is unwilling to violate the privacy of her deepest secrets .They tell each other more than they have ever told anyone else, but that doesn't mean they have to vocalize every hidden facet of themselves, does it? There are things that Blair prefers to keep to herself, he thinks, and he refuses to ravage every corner of her soul in pursuit of those things. If he got his hands around them, he is convinced that he would only damage them anyway. So, he keeps a safe distance. He knows her secrets (most of them anyway) and she knows that he knows them. He sees no call to insult her dignity by speaking them into the harsh light of reality.

This all sounds very noble in his head.

But really, he thinks, they both just want to play make believe.

Blair wants to make believe that she is living an Audrey Hepburn movie. Eating disorders have no place in Roman Holiday or My Fair Lady.

Chuck wants to make believe that he is capable of making Blair happy.

But if she isn't as strong as she seems, then he doesn't know how to make her happy. He knows how to love her violently and hold her attention with endless games. He knows how to scheme with her and buy her everything she ever wanted. He can give a heartfelt pep talk (_"Next time you forget you're Blair Waldorf, remember I'm Chuck Bass and I love you."_) and he can pay an endless stream of photographers to take her picture. But he doesn't know how to be gentle with her. So, he makes believe that she doesn't need him to be gentle. He makes believe that she is beyond needing to be rescued. He never learned how to rescue people. He was too busy being rescued himself. He plays the one who needs to be saved and she plays the heroine. Those are their roles. He can't switch in the middle; he hasn't memorized the hero's lines.

So, this is the part where she pretends to be invincible and he pretends to buy it.

Gossip Girl was right. He is a coward.

"Miss Blair, you eat now." Dorota's voice is jarring; he had forgotten her presence

"I told you I'm not hungry."

"God, Blair," his voice breaks with the strain of every thought he has failed to articulate since walking into her room. "Please just fucking eat something."

She looks like she's vacillating between anger and shame, but then something like apathy wins out.

"Fine." She walks directly to the tray. "I'll eat if you'll go."

She sits back at her vanity and bites pointedly into a piece of bread.

He considers this a victory.

"I'll be back tomorrow." He starts to walk past her to the hall, but then stops. He leans down and kisses the top of her head. "Get some rest."

She allows the gesture, but pulls away when he lingers.

"I meant what I said. You can take your things."

He searches her face for some sign of vengeance. He imagines that, maybe, beneath the exhaustion, he sees a glint of spite, and this makes him irrationally happy.

"They're just things. Do whatever you want with them."

She can shred his clothes, burn his books, pawn the jewelry. They're only things. And, by the time she's through destroying his belongings, maybe she'll be ready to deal with him.

"Fine." she nods slowly. "But I want my pin back."

_Two months after his long overdue sidewalk declaration and they were both still giddy with the rush of newness and the comfort of familiarity._

_As Blair snuggled closer, Chuck found himself unable to remember why it had taken them so long to get to this place. Nothing had ever felt more natural than her leg slung over his or more right than her hair splayed across his chest. The only problem was that she was never close enough anymore. No matter how tightly he held her or how intimately they were entwined, it was never enough. He once thought that having her as his … girlfriend (the word sounded strangely inadequate in his head) would only diminish her appeal. But his need for her remained a constant ache, continuously demanding satisfaction._

_He stroked the back of her hand and she lightly grasped his fingers._

_"Chuck and Blair holding hands," she murmured sleepily. He could feel her mouth turning up against his chest._

_He laughed, lifting her hand and pressing it to his lips before securely locking their fingers together._

_"Think about it." He echoed his own words from the year before with amusement._

_"We should take in a movie tomorrow." She yawned._

_"Share a milkshake."_

_She giggled and let go of his hand to wrap her arm snugly around his waist. He pulled her in tighter, burying his nose in her hair (inhaling the smell of vanilla shampoo, Clive Christian No. 1, and something indefinably Blair)._

_"Hm … rent a paddleboat?"_

_"Or a bicycle built for two." He was not to be outdone._

_"Buy matching outfits."_

_"Hate to break it to you, Waldorf, but we've been matching for years." He kissed her hairline, glancing across their hotel suite to the dresser where their clothes for the next day were laid out; her yellow and white polka dot dress next to his yellow and green striped dress shirt._

_"I am not referring to accidental, if strangely consistent, color palate coordination." She insisted indignantly. "I mean, like, matching …" she searched for the elusive word "… track suits."_

_"Too far." Chuck pinched her side, just above her hip and she squealed, slapping at him playfully before settling back in the crook of his arm._

_"Besides," He continued with forced offhandedness, "If you really want to make this official, all you have to do is hand over that heart shaped pin of yours."_

_She suddenly became very still._

_"Are you making fun of me?"_

_He shook his head earnestly, but hoped she didn't noticed that his heart was beating in double time. Yes, she loved him (so much it consumed her, or so she claimed) …_

_But this was the pin she had purchased when she was nine years old, not because it was expensive or fashionable. It was neither. She bought it only because she loved it irrationally. She couldn't explain why it had called out to her, why it had continued to appeal to her over the years. It wasn't particularly shiny or dazzling or special. But the pin was classic, Blair thought, it was elegant. It had nicks here and there, but it was tough. Though she couldn't quite put into words why, she thought the pin's flaws might even be what made it so lovely._

_She had explained this to Chuck in 8th grade, when she told him that she needed his help to steal Nate's sweater. She finally knew for sure that she was "terribly in love" with her boyfriend, she said, and what better way to tell him? Chuck had mocked her mercilessly, but then showed up at her house the next day and tossed her the requested, stolen sweater. She sewed her heart on Nate's sleeve as part of her Valentine's Day gift to him that year._

_So, Chuck was well acquainted with the pin that symbolized Blair's girlhood dreams and her adolescent hopes, the pin that symbolized her future. He knew that it carried all of Blair's promises and expectations, that the tiny pin was heavy with the weight of her trust. The very thought of such a burden would have sent him running the year before (would have and did). But now, he thought, it was a burden he craved._

_So, yes, he really wanted her pin._

_She searched his eyes, as if trying to confirm the existence of something she thought might be there. When she finally looked down, he couldn't tell if she had found it. He braced himself to pretend it wasn't a big deal, that he was mostly joking anyway._

_"It's so silly." She stared at her hands. "I didn't think you would want it."_

_Her response surprised him into dropping his guard._

_"I do. I want it."_

_She looked up again and, this time, there was a small smile on her face._

_"No one has ever actually asked for it."_

_"Well, I'm asking."_

_"You don't wear sweaters." She smirked._

_"I wear sweaters." he insisted._

_"Mm, rarely." She shook her head. "What would be the point if you only wore it rarely?"_

_"I could keep it in my wallet." He tried to make the suggestion casually, as if the thought hadn't occurred to him before._

_"You could, huh?"_

_That's when he knew she was just toying with him. Any annoyance was overwhelmed by a surge of pure happiness as he realized that the pin would be his when they got back to New York._

_She disentangled herself from his arms and walked towards her luggage._

_"Where are you going?" He sat up, leaning against the headboard._

_She didn't answer, just sifted through one of her purses until she found what she was looking for, closed her hand around it, and walked back to bed._

_She sat facing him, folding her legs Indian style. He mirrored her pose._

_"Open your hand."_

_He complied and almost immediately felt a cool piece of metal. When he looked down, her silver trinket was resting in his palm._

_"You brought it with you?" He asked, unable to tears his eyes away from the legendary pin._

_"I did."_

_She hesitated for a moment then closed her hands around his._

_"Chuck Bass," She murmured "This belongs to you."_

_She looked up at him solemnly._

_"I've given it away before. But it's never really belonged to anyone but you."_

_He felt like something might be caught in his throat and he couldn't believe he was fucking blinking back tears over a piece of jewelry. But, then, they weren't really talking about a piece of jewelry and they both knew it._

_"Thank you," he managed to whisper._

_She nodded, but resisted when he tried to pull her closer. Instead, she tightened her grasp on his hands and seemed to be looking for the right words before she finally spoke again._

_"Don't … lose it, ok?"_

_"I won't." He shook his head. "I'll keep it safe."_

_"And don't … break it … ok?"_

_He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the forehead by way of telling her that he understood; he knew they weren't talking strictly about that pin. _

_"I won't." He vowed. "I'll be careful with it."_

He suddenly imagines that he feels the pin (which is stuck securely to the inside of his wallet) burning through his jacket pocket. He is abstractly aware of Dorota excusing herself to the hallway.

There was something calculating in Blair's eyes when she demanded the pin. But now he knows that the sharp pain he is feeling must be written all over his face and she isn't even looking at him. What good is retribution if she isn't taking any pleasure in it?

"You want it back?" When he finally finds his voice, all he can do is repeat her words in question form.

"I do."

The confirmation pushes him to his knees in front of her.

"It doesn't work that way, Blair." He frantically pushes her hair out of her face, behind her ears.

"I know." Her eyes fill up with tears. "But I still want it back."

"Blair, please …" His voice cracks. "I'll do better."

"You haven't even apologized."

"I'm sorry." He says immediately. "I am, Blair. I'm so sorry."

"What are you sorry for?"

"I'm sorry for everything. I'm sorry I hurt you."

She looks like she wants to believe him so badly that she almost lets herself for a second, but then she looks directly into his eyes.

"Would you do it again?"

He is a liar and a manipulator but he has never been one to tell Blair what she wants to hear just because she wants to hear it.

His silence fills the room.

"Then you're not sorry." She whispers.

He wishes he could argue with her. But she's right.

He would do it again because he still believes that it's possible for him to walk away from this with everything. He would do it again because he has the Empire now. No one, not even Jack, can touch it. And if he hadn't done what he did, that wouldn't be true.

Buildings can be lost irrevocably with the stroke of a pen. But people, he thinks, can change their minds. You can convince people of things. You can reason with them. You can win them over. You can give them time. You can buy them things and make love to them and they can forgive you. Blair will forgive him.

"I'm sorry I hurt you." he repeats.

"That's not good enough." She shakes her head sadly.

She holds her hand out to him, palm up. He stares at it for a moment before he realizes that she's looking at him expectantly. She wipes away tears with the back of her other hand as she waits for her pin.

"Blair …"

She has stumbled on the perfect punishment, but she's crying and her hand is shaking and he doesn't know how to process any of this.

So, instead, he takes her open palm in his hand and kisses the center of it.

"Will you please just sleep on it?" He pleads. "You said you didn't want to do this tonight, remember?"

She looks like she's about to argue, but she doesn't say anything.

"I'll be back tomorrow." He whispers for the third time that night.

He takes her silence as acceptance and kisses her cheek before standing up and walking out.

* * *

When he gets back to his suite, he realizes that he will have to sell every piece of furniture he owns.

He doesn't know where it happened.

He was so exhausted when he fell into bed last night and in such a hurry to get out this morning and so distracted by Nate and Serena this afternoon … it hadn't even occurred to him to wonder. But now it's all he can think about.

His eyes the pool table, the dinner table, the bar. No surface is beyond suspicion.

He stands in the corner, leaning against the wall.

The sofa stands out like a siren. The red wrap-around that once seemed so bold and stylish now seems to flash "stop," "danger."

Yes, the sofa seems most likely.

Surely not his bed.

Jack would, of course, just to really twist the knife … but Blair wouldn't.

Unless she didn't have a choice in the matter.

Oh.

Chuck never forgot about Lily. It isn't as if that night at the opera slipped his mind. It just never occurred to him that the incident last year was relevant to this situation.

Jack and Blair had slept together before, after all.

When it came to the actual sex, his biggest concern had been that Blair would enjoy it. He hadn't considered the possibility that Jack might hurt her.

The possibility seems so likely now that he can't believe he never even asked her what happened, whether she was ok.

He slides to the floor.

His last conscious thought is that he no longer has any idea what he would and wouldn't do again.


	4. Chapter 4

_"Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?"_

_- Clarice Lispector_

* * *

He doesn't open his eyes.

His leg is numb, his back is throbbing, and he is vaguely aware that his neck is probably not meant to bend this way, but he doesn't get up. Instead, he throws an arm over his face and rolls over.

_He can hear the spritz of her perfume followed by the zip of her purse. He feels the shift in the mattress as she sits on the edge and the brush of her fingers as she sweeps his hair off his forehead._

_"I reset the alarm." She whispers. "Don't forget you have a meeting in two hours."_

_"Come back to bed." He doesn't open his eyes, just gropes towards the sound of her voice. He feels her catch his hand and plant a light kiss on his knuckles._

_His hand follows her arm to her lower back, attempting to pull her down next to him. She sighs as if she might be considering it, but then resists. "I'm late for Statistics. Remind me never to take a 7AM class again."_

_"Never take a 7AM class again." He murmurs, still half asleep._

_"Thank you, that's very helpful." He can hear the smirk in her voice as she kisses the side of his head._

He isn't sure whether it's an actual memory he's clinging to or just the remnants of a dream, but it slips away regardless.

He knows that he isn't in bed and he knows that Blair isn't here and he knows that something is very wrong, but it isn't until his eyes are actually open that he can clearly identify the source of his mounting dread.

It's too bright. All of the shades are open and the light is harsh, unforgiving. Everything clicks into place with a nauseating rush.

He drags himself off the floor, trying not to look anywhere in particular. When his eyes settle on any one thing, he can see it.

_Jack grabbing Blair by the wrists and shoving her against the wall._

He trudges into the bedroom and strips off his crumpled suit. He doesn't bother showering. He doesn't bother shaving.

_Jack crushing Blair into the bed, forcing her legs apart with his knee._

He can't find an undershirt, but he decides he doesn't care.

_Jack throwing Blair onto the floor and pinning her arms above her head._

He pulls on the first pair of pants he finds and a shirt that's lying on the closet floor. He doesn't take the time to look for a tie or a comb.

_Jack pressing Blair into the kitchen counter and leaving marks where his fingers dig into her thighs._

He has to get out of there.

_Jack forcing Blair to her knees._

He hurries down to the lobby where the images are muted by distance.

"Good morning, Mr. Bass."

He ignores the blonde concierge with the perky voice and the plastered-on smile. He ignores the stares from staff who are probably stunned to see their normally immaculate boss with his hair un-slicked and his shirt un-tucked. He ignores the whispers from patrons who, despite the concierge's greeting, are probably wondering if he's really the owner, seeing as it's the middle of a weekday morning and he is slouching on a sofa near the bar, staring vacantly into space. He idly supposes that he doesn't bear much resemblance to the Chuck Bass who was featured in Fortune last month.

It isn't until he's already dialing his private investigator that he realizes he's not going to work today.

* * *

It's almost noon by the time he's knocking on the door to the Presidential Suite at the Four Seasons.

"Well, well." Jack raises an eyebrow when he sees Chuck, but gives no other sign of surprise. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you look like shit."

Chuck pushes past him.

"Can I offer you a drink …? A snack …?" Jack smirks and closes the door behind them. "… a mirror?"

"Why are you still in town?" It isn't that Chuck expects an answer; it's just that he might as well ask before he puts his P.I. on it.

"Why not?" Jack follows Chuck further inside the suite. "New York is a wonderful town. Haven't you heard? The Bronx is up and the Battery's - "i

"Are you through?"

"What's wrong, Chuck?" Jack laughs and leans against the wall. "Not enjoying the Empire?"

Chuck fixes him with a warning glare, but gives no other response.

"Not enjoying the lovely Blair-?"

Chuck isn't entirely certain how Jack ends up pinned to the wall. It wasn't a conscious decision to grab his uncle by the collar and push him against the closest hard surface. But, now that Chuck is holding Jack by the shirt, he thinks that maybe this is why he tracked his uncle down.

He certainly knows better than to think that Jack will actually tell him what happened with Blair. And, if Chuck is being honest with himself, he knows better than to think that he actually wants Jack to tell him.

But that doesn't stop him from asking.

"What did you do?"

Chuck revels in the fury that expands until there's no room left for guilt. It's such an unbearably sweet relief to believe that someone else is responsible for this train wreck. He indulges in the release of blaming Jack for everything - the look on Blair's face last night, the empty chocolate boxes under her bed, the pile of Chuck's things on her floor, the twisted images that haunt his suite…

"What did I do …?" Jack has the gall to feign confusion.

"In my suite. To Blair." He bites each syllable.

"She didn't tell you?"

Chuck's tightens his grip on Jack's shirt.

"She didn't tell you." Jack's question becomes a smug statement. Even with Chuck's hands practically around his throat, Jack's eyes are dancing with amusement. "Interesting."

"I swear to God, if you hurt her-"

Jack snorts as if this is a ridiculous suggestion. "What makes you think I would hurt her?"

"I know you." Chuck spits.

Chuck knows Jack because he is the protégé Jack never asked for. Jack never sat Chuck down and explained his views on women and sex, but that didn't stop Chuck from learning them. Chuck learned by watching the truly degenerate (even by his current standards) collection of adult movies Jack gave him when he turned twelve. He learned by watching Jack seduce and destroy socialites whose husbands made the mistake of crossing him. He learned by watching Jack coerce Chuck's nannies into the spare bedroom when Bart was out of town. He learned by watching Jack count out stacks out of cash for high priced call girls when Chuck was supposed to be asleep. Jack didn't have to say a word.

Chuck knows Jack because, once upon a time, he was well on his way to becoming Jack and, no matter how far he comes, there will always be dark, unconquerable parts of him that reflect his uncle. His father haunts him intermittently, but Jack is a constant presence. Serena has no idea that, even when she thought she was only looking out for Jenny Humphrey (_"Don't you ever touch her again."_), she was, incidentally, short circuiting Chuck's metamorphosis into his uncle. Blair has no idea that her very existence is a living counterweight to his uncle's every philosophy. Chuck is well aware that, without these two women, he would be Jack by now.

"You've known me your whole life." Jack chuckles. "You certainly knew me two days ago when you made your deal."

"It wasn't _my_ deal."

Chuck searches for a better retort but comes up empty because, of course, he did know everything two days ago that he knows now. Nothing has changed except that he is no longer overcome with anger and insecurity and the all consuming desire for revenge. Really, nothing has changed at all.

"No?" Jack sneers. "Your hotel, your girlfriend, your signature … you can understand my confusion."

He lets go of his uncle and runs a hand over his eyes.

Jack adjusts his shirt. "Pull yourself together, Chuck. She's just a girl."

The words are so untrue, they're almost funny, but, as far as Jack is concerned, Chuck supposes they are accurate. In light of this realization, he finds it impossible to maintain his previous level of anger. The fury of moments ago rushes out and the guilt rushes back in with a finality that knocks the breath out of him.

But he still manages to do the thing he now knows he came here to do: he punches Jack in the face.

It doesn't feel as good as Chuck thought it might and he fully expects Jack to punch him back. He braces himself for the impact while Jack reels. He finds, quite unexpectedly, that he is looking forward to the blow. He is eagerly anticipating a clearly identifiable source of pain. It occurs to him that the reason he came here wasn't to punch Jack after-all; it was to get punched.

Jack looks like he's about to retaliate, but then he just shoves Chuck violently towards the door.

"You're not worth it. Get the fuck out of here."

Chuck swallows the odd disappointment that follows Jack's dismissal and stumbles towards the elevator.

He wanders out of the Four Seasons, sinking under the weight of the knowledge that he can blame Jack all he wants, but that doesn't make this Jack's fault.

Blair isn't "Blair" to Jack.

Jack's grade school memories aren't dominated by a little girl in curls and tights who would only play tag if the boys were doing the chasing (she refused to be "it"). Jack wasn't there for Blair's first kiss (it wasn't Nate; it was a 4th grade game of spin the bottle and the lucky bastard was Clive Richards - though Blair still insists that "didn't count"). It wasn't Jack who took Blair to her first R rated movie and teased her when she covered her eyes during the sex scenes.

Jack hasn't been there to see how carefully Blair selects each La Perla set, laboring under the false impression that it is her lingerie that makes her sexy. Jack doesn't care that Blair holds her breath when her clothes first come off – but that touching her in the right spot can make all of her body issues melt away (the challenge is that the "right spot" moves every time). Jack doesn't know which words make Blair writhe like she's in heat and which words make her pull back in disgust. Jack doesn't know that Blair has slept with exactly four men ever and that she regrets exactly half of them. Jack doesn't know that Blair was a virgin until she was almost seventeen years old.

_"I saw the blast." Blair smirked, moving her knight to B-5. "Looks like your secret is out."_

_The summer between 6th and 7th grade - a few weeks after Chuck's birthday and few weeks before they left the Hamptons - Gossip Girl announced that Chuck had recently lost his virginity to Georgina Sparks._

_The sex itself was no secret. He already had a whole routine down when it came to the "what" – a mix of "just you wait" type teasers and explicit details (most of which were borrowed from porn, seeing as sex with Georgina had been relatively brief and not exactly the stuff of fantasies). The secret was the "who." By middle school, Georgina had already earned a reputation as an easy, psycho bitch. Nate, Serena, and Blair had managed to pry her name out of him one night when he was drunk, but he hadn't told anyone else._

_"She's pathetic." Chuck moved his bishop to A-2. "She probably sent the tip herself when she realized I wouldn't be responding to her insipid texts or holding her hand between classes next year."_

_"Poor Whoregina …" Blair shook her head in mock sympathy._

_"Poor me."_

_"That's what you get for poking the beast." Her eyes lit up with delight at her own pun. "What on earth were you thinking?"_

_"I'll be happy to spell it out for you -" He began with a leer._

_"Oh, give it a rest." She rolled her eyes. "We're talking about Georgina Sparks. Be honest. It was repulsive, wasn't it?"_

_"It was – whatever." He answered truthfully since Blair was the only one listening. It wasn't that it hadn't felt good (like an escape, like an effective distraction) and it wasn't that he didn't fully intend to repeat the experience with every girl worth having at Constance before moving on to conquer Chapin and York. It was just that, when Georgina had crawled on top of him and unceremoniously lifted her skirt, it hadn't exactly been earth shattering._

_"But was it –"_

_"If we can manage to wake Nathaniel, I'm sure he'll be happy to clear up any questions you might have about sex, Waldorf." Chuck winked. "Or were you hoping for a pinch hitter?"_

_Nate was sprawled on the couch behind Blair. It was a rainy afternoon and, like most rainy afternoons in the Hamptons, Nate had opted for an extended nap (leading Blair to pull out the chess board and demand that Chuck entertain her while Serena was out shopping with her grandmother)._

_"Don't be disgusting." Blair stuck her nose in the air as she captured one of his pawns with her rook. Chuck immediately pounced on the rook with his queen. He grinned when she made a little noise of surprise and irritation._

_"Oh, that's right." He leaned back in his chair, waiting for her to make her next move. "I forgot that you're determined to keep Nate in a constant state of discomfort for the next decade."_

_"He seems pretty comfortable." She sniffed, glancing at Nate, whose mouth had fallen open in his sleep. "Besides, forgive me for not wanting my first time to be in the coat room at Isabel's 13th birthday party."_

_It was actually Isabel's brother's bedroom, but Chuck supposed that, technically, it was the room where most people had left their coats that night, so he didn't bother correcting Blair._

_"Holding out for the coat room at her 30th, are you?"_

_"No." Her tone was defensive as she moved her knight closer to his king. "I'm just waiting until I'm sure."_

_Chuck laughed. "What does that even mean?"_

_"It's not a complicated concept." She picked up her queen and moved it across the board, leaving her finger on the piece until she was satisfied that it was safe._

_"Then enlighten me. How, pray tell, will you know when you're 'sure'?" Chuck laughed, advancing his bishop again._

_"I'll know when it feels right." She shrugged. "Sex isn't meaningless for some of us, Bass. It's not just some random thing to do when Mrs. Coates is late with the birthday cake. It's a big deal. It matters. So, yeah, I want to be sure."_

_"'It matters'?" He teased. "You're a walking after-school special, Waldorf."_

_He couldn't begin to identify with her sentiment. There wasn't much of anything that mattered to Chuck. He certainly didn't endow his actions with any particular weight. The tangible consequences were easily erased with enough money and he didn't waste time worrying about intangible consequences._

_He supposed that Blair was different though. Blair's decisions always seemed to take on immense significance, if only because she made them so strategically - lining them up as if she was creating some invisible, intricate design. Chuck looked at his firsts as things to get out of the way, but he knew that Blair still had the program from her first symphony, the luggage sticker from her first trip to Europe, the cork from her first glass of wine. Of course Blair would want to wait until she was 'sure.' He found himself smiling a little fondly at her as he came to this realization._

_"And you're a walking cautionary tale." The corners of her mouth turned up as she moved her second knight into position with a flourish. "Check."_

It wasn't Jack in the back of a limo with Blair the night she slid across the seat and kissed him like it was the most natural thing she had ever done. It wasn't Jack who whispered the question that acted as a starting gun – sending her lips crashing against his for a second time, her hand to his thigh, her legs around his waist, her slip to the floor. And it wasn't Jack who hesitated at the last second, only to see how steadily she met his eyes when she finally whispered the answer to his question: _"I'm sure._"

It was the unforeseen marvel of Blair's certainty that triggered an implosion, rearranging every memory Chuck carried of her until the truth was obvious: he had always been on the brink, waiting for the right catalyst to push him over the edge. There had been unrecognized close calls and there had been moments where he almost suspected that he might be in danger of falling. But it wasn't until he was already spiraling that he knew he had been on the verge of loving her for years.

Sex with Blair didn't feel anything like sex with Georgina and it didn't feel like sex with any of the faceless, nameless women he had fucked before. It didn't feel like an escape and it didn't feel like a distraction. It felt like a big deal. It felt like a revelation. It felt like something finally mattered.

Jack doesn't know any of this and so he can almost be forgiven for thinking that Blair is just another girl to use as a bargaining chip.

But, if someone knew all of this and still dressed Blair up in gold-trimmed Matthew Williamson to trade her body for a building …

That might very well be unforgivable.

* * *

He is finishing his third single malt when he gets her message.

_Give me another day_

It isn't until he reads the text that he realizes he has been holding his breath off and on since he left the Four Seasons. He fills his lungs with air and orders a third scotch, feeling all the grim relief of a man who has been granted a temporary stay of execution.

_Anything u want_

His deferential reply is bullshit.

Now that he is off the hook he can admit to himself that he probably wouldn't have shown up at Eleanor's penthouse tonight anyway. He is just grateful that Blair has spared him the shame of standing her up.

He can't see her right now.

He knows that the next time Blair sees him, she will try to end things again – not implicitly and not technically. She will try to end things explicitly, officially and for the foreseeable future – probably permanently as far as she is concerned (despite everything, he tells himself that he knows better).

He was fully aware of this when he told her he would be back today. He was prepared to fight her. He was prepared to stand in her way and, if (when) that failed, he was prepared to lay the groundwork for getting her back. He was filled with appropriate concern and remorse. He was ready to beg. He was ready to accept punishment without any thought of reprisal.

But that was before he realized that his suite is permanently haunted by the echoes of what might have happened there. That was before he realized that Jack is only incidentally responsible for any of this. That was yesterday.

Tonight, he doesn't want her anywhere near him.

At this moment, he despises himself so thoroughly that he has no idea how he might lash out at her if he were in her presence. He can never quite predict the form his self-hatred will take. He might somehow find a way to blame everything on her; tell her that this is her fault. He might find the perfect insult to hurt her just a little more than he already has. He might find the perfect tone to make her hate him if she doesn't already. He might look at her with cold eyes and cut into her with sentiments that will undo a year of I love you's.

He knows exactly how to accomplish all of this. He has done it before.

The ugliest things he has ever said to her have been on nights like tonight, when he was filled to the brim with self loathing.

_I don't want you anymore._

_It's time to let go of your fantasies._

Cruelty is his addiction more than sex ever was, more than drugs or alcohol. It is his expertise. On nights like tonight, he craves it. He feels the almost irresistible urge to drown himself in cruelty until his own pain is muted by someone else's – and no one's pain is quite as exquisite as Blair's. The more he grows to love her, the more her suffering becomes his own - and the more she is imperiled by his brutal, masochistic impulses. On nights like tonight, these impulses kick into high gear and whisper that nothing would feel quite so excruciating as breaking her once and for all. If he wants to destroy himself there is no faster way than destroying Bair.

This is why he can't see her tonight.

If this were last year, he would already be on his way to crush the shattered remains of their relationship. He would leave before she started to cry. He would then proceed to pick up a whore or an eight ball or both and take off for Thailand by morning. He would submerge himself in cruelty until he was numb to the things he (because who else is there to blame?) has put Blair's body through in the past two days- from Jack to … whatever she does when she locks herself in the bathroom for hours at a time.

But this is not last year. He has learned over the course of the past twelve months that these feelings will pass, but the damage they cause is potentially irreparable. That is why he is sitting alone at the Empire bar, downing his fourth scotch and holding his destructive tendencies loosely in check. It might be pathetic to count this as personal growth, but he is feeling pretty pathetic already and so he doesn't let that concern him.

When he empties his third glass, the bartender asks if he wants another round, but the bar is getting crowded and Chuck would prefer to drink himself into oblivion in privacy tonight.

"Just give me the bottle." He drops a hundred dollar bill on the counter and grabs the Glenlivet when the bartender places it in front of him.

He doesn't bother trying to look sober when he stands up. He doesn't bother trying to hide the open bottle of scotch as he makes his way to the lobby; if anything, he brandishes it, daring someone to say something. No one does.

He approaches the check-in counter and sees that the perky blonde from this morning has been replaced by an equally perky brunette.

"Good evening, Mr. Bass." She smiles a huge but vacant smile.

"I need a room."

"Certainly, Mr. Bass. What name should I make the reservation under?"

"Just give me a key."

She looks so confused and he has such little patience right now that he is on the verge of walking behind the counter, pushing her aside, and finding a key for himself.

"Is there a problem with your suite, Mr. Bass?"

She has no idea.

"Any key." He grits out.

She wisely chooses not to press the matter.

* * *

i On The Town. Who knew that Jack was a Gene Kelly fan?


	5. Chapter 5

_Right now I'm hearing nothing but silence_

_High beams are on; I can feel you_

_Every piece contains a little bit of violence_

_And you've changed so much_

_But it's still you_

_- Ben Lee_

* * *

The blood comes before the pain. He stares at the angry, red gash for a suspended moment and then lets loose a string of profanities when the broken glass registers in his palm. He doubles over.

The pants he is wearing (the pants he has been wearing for the past … however many days it's been) are charcoal gray. They belong to the bottom half of his favorite suit. He remembers this after he has already pressed his hand to them, in an effort to stop the bleeding. When he pulls his hand away, it leaves a bright, red sticky spot that he suspects no amount of dry cleaning will remove.

He takes a few deep breaths and lifts his head.

It was only one tumbler that he dropped, but the remains are everywhere he looks. The floor and the counter and the sink are covered in shattered glass.

He grimaces as the pain in his hand intensifies. He doesn't know what possessed him to try to pick up after himself. He should have just called the maid.

A bottle of scotch is sitting in the middle of the jagged mess. Undeterred by his throbbing left hand, he uses his right to grab the alcohol.

He steps on a piece of glass on his way out of the kitchen and pulls the shard out of his foot with a hiss.

He tracks blood into the living room.

When he woke up, everything was still muted and hazy, but now he feels the beginnings of a violent hangover encroaching on layers of numbness. This is the clearest his head has been since he left the Empire bar the other night and it is suddenly crowded with far too many thoughts; they won't all fit.

He takes a long swig from the bottle of scotch, staving off sobriety. He leans against the wall and tries to distract himself from the sharp waves of pain wracking his hand.

His eyes skim the still unfamiliar suite where he has spent the past … one – two – this must be the third day he has spent here.

"You'll thank me later," Blair had insisted when she began unofficially overseeing the team of interior designers hired when he first bought the Empire.

Chuck had tossed Blair the suites as a bone. She wanted to help with the marketing and the financing and the event planning. She wanted to have a talk with the landscaper and make additions to the menu and lay out some ground rules for the staff.

There was no denying that her ideas were often shrewd and sometimes brilliant, but he ignored them all out of hand because accepting them would have made the Empire a joint venture and that was the last thing Chuck wanted. In order for the Empire to fulfill its purpose – for it to make him worthy of his name, of his inheritance, (of Blair) – he had to build it absolutely and completely alone. To let Blair help in any significant way would have defeated the entire goal of creating something from scratch (scratch being the billions he took out of Bass Industries).

But she was so eager to contribute that - with an air of martyrdom - he finally sent her to meet with the interior designer. Blair (accurately) accused Chuck of patronizing her, but she threw herself into the project anyway, agonizing over catalogues and fabric swatches.

She micro-managed every detail of the process and so it is really no wonder that this particular suite screams her name – from the hazelnut leather sofa to the full, silk curtains; from the oversized crystal accessories to the peaches and cream walls; from the Kandinsky print to the Persian rug that his foot is currently ruining with red splotches.

After he took the official tour last fall, he told Blair that the rooms were "very nice." He can't remember if he ever actually thanked her. He knows he never told her what he is thinking now: that her work is sophisticated and trendy; that she created the perfect blend of his taste and hers; that she somehow managed to put her finger on everything he wanted but didn't know how to describe.

The room he is looking at right now makes him wonder what the rest of the Empire would look like if he had let her help with the marketing and the financing and the event planning, like she wanted. (It almost makes him wonder how things would have turned out if he had let her help with Jack. Almost. But he doesn't let himself really consider the possibility that things with Jack _could_ have gone differently.)

He takes another long drink from the bottle. The liquid doesn't burn his throat like it should. He doesn't feel that drunk, but he must be if he can't even taste the scotch …

_"Chu-uck, are you drunk?" Serena used to demand, after a few cocktails._

_"More or less." He would smirk, always amused at Serena's insistence that everyone keep pace with her buzz._

Chuck used to be an expert at walking the line between intoxicated and sober until it practically disappeared. By his sophomore year of high school, even his best friends couldn't consistently tell the difference.

He takes another drink.

His gaze settles on an oversized leather chair by the window and he steps forward when he notices a pile of clothes stacked on top of it. His phone charger, a big bottle of aspirin, and a bigger bottle of water are all resting beside the clothes.

He has no idea where these things came from; yesterday is slippery when he grasps at it.

He remembers sitting on the sofa, finishing a bottle of scotch. He remembers calling down to the bar and a bellboy dropping off a second bottle of scotch. He remembers lying on the floor in front of the sofa. He doesn't remember going to bed, but he must have at some point because he woke up there this morning - or afternoon, whichever it is.

Regardless of what he does or does not remember, he knows that he would not have gone up to the penthouse for clothes. He would not have gone up to the penthouse for anything.

He takes another step and his foot (the one that isn't still tracking blood) makes contact with a piece of paper. He leans down and picks it up, focusing intently until the words make sense.

**You still owe me dinner.**

**- E.**

**P.S. If I haven't heard from you by tonight, I'm calling in reinforcements.**

_He was sinking into the hardwood floor and a tangled mess of memories. When he felt something pulling him to the surface, he resisted._

_"You gotta work with me here, Chuck."_

_He groaned as the garbled sound of the television grew gradually louder and the strange pulling sensation more insistent._

_He pried his eyes open to find his step-brother hovering over him. "Eric …"_

_Before he could process the boy's presence, Chuck felt himself being grabbed under the arms and hauled into a seated position._

_"Ugh, you smell like something that died in a distillery." A blurry version of Eric took a step back and crossed his arms once Chuck was propped against the sofa. "Can you walk?"_

_"Prefer not to." Chuck let his head loll back onto the sofa cushion._

_"Well, you're not staying on the floor, and I can't carry you, so, unless you have a rickshaw stashed somewhere …"_

_As Eric's voice grew less and less distant, it dawned on Chuck that the boy had seemingly materialized out of thin air._

_"What're you doing here?" Chuck slurred, lifting his head._

_"A bellboy recognized me and said I could find you here … You left the door open – which, by the way, not the smartest –"_

_"But why –"_

_"We had dinner plans." Eric said in an off handed way that sounded forced even in Chuck's condition._

_"Fuck." Chuck's head hit the cushions again with a dull thud._

_It had been months since Chuck had spent any amount of time to speak of with his step-brother and, whenever he allowed himself to think about it, the state of their relationship put a strange, guilty taste in his mouth._

_("He understands, Chuck. He knows you didn't mean it." Blair would say quietly. Chuck would look away, unable to meet her eyes at the memory of all the things he hadn't meant the day of Bart's wake. "You should call him.")_

_Chuck finally did call Eric after Christmas, but everything was already spiraling in a downward direction by then. Chuck had been scheduling and canceling and rescheduling dinner ever since. When they set up a time for their most recent attempt at a meeting, Chuck had solemnly promised that absolutely nothing would make him cancel for a sixth time._

_"It's ok. Don't worry about it." Eric assured him, sounding almost sincere. "Let's just get you back to the penthouse."_

_Eric leaned down to help him up, but Chuck recoiled._

_(Jack sinking his teeth into Blair's shoulder … Jack tearing Blair's dress off her body …)_

_"No." Chuck pressed his palms into his eyes, driving the images away. "I can't go there."_

_"Ok ..." Eric's voice was cautious. "Why –"_

_"I'm staying here." The words fell into each other, indistinctly, but Chuck's tone apparently still managed to foreclose argument because Eric just nodded._

_"If that's what you want. Does Nate know that you're –"_

_"Nate doesn't care." Chuck hadn't really considered the words before they left his mouth. They sounded terrible when they hit his ears; they sounded true._

_Eric looked skeptical, but didn't say anything for a few moments._

_"What about Blair? Does she know where you are?"_

_"Blair?" His voice cracked on her name. "No."_

_He hadn't heard from Blair since 'give me another day.' He suspected that her lack of communication may have been his cue to go find her, but he was in no state. He was deliberately keeping himself in no state._

_"I can't see her." Chuck added, more to himself than Eric._

_Eric sighed. "Look, from your overall grossness, it's clear that you two are in the middle of a fight, but I'm sure-"_

_"You haven't talked to your sister." It wasn't a question. The answer was obvious._

_"What? – Not for a couple days, no. What does that -?"_

_"Nothing." Chuck let his eyes drift shut. Eric would find out soon enough._

_After a few seconds of silence, he felt Eric grab him around the middle, urging him to his feet. "Let's get you to bed."_

_When they finally reached the bedroom, Eric dropped him on the mattress and Chuck sprawled on top of the covers, half way to unconscious already._

_"... key on the counter …" Eric's voice seemed far away._

_"Mhmm." The sinking feeling was back._

_"… bring down some of your stuff …" Eric's voice continued to fade. "… stay here long enough to make sure you don't – y'know, choke on your own vomit and then …"_

_His eyes refused to open, but he still managed to snort at the implication that Chuck Bass couldn't hold his liquor._

**P.P.S. By now, you've probably realized that I dumped out your scotch. Please consider not calling down for more.**

Chuck stares at the bottle in his hand. He lifts it and smells the contents before taking a tentative sip.

How has it taken him so long to notice that he is drinking water?

He slams the bottle onto the coffee table and then winces at the loud clanging noise. He imagines all of the ways he is going to torture Eric before he kills him.

He fumbles in his pocket for his cell phone, but of course it's dead.

Chuck stumbles to the chair where his charger is sitting beside his clothes and grabs it. He crawls to an outlet.

He is so singularly focused on getting to 'E' (is for Empire) that he almost doesn't see it: Missed call from the girl who's been first under 'W' (is for Waldorf) since they first exchanged numbers in 5th grade.

The blinking voicemail light temporarily drives all thoughts of procuring more alcohol from his mind.

He dials with an unsteady hand and groans impatiently when he is prompted for his password.

"Chuck! Blair's not answering. Spare me the lecture on how you're 'not my personal Blair locator' and pleease tell her to call me. Nate's party is-"

He listens in stunned confusion until he realizes that Serena's voicemail is days old. Delete.

"Mr. Bass, there's a-"

Delete. After deleting another five work messages, he thinks better of it and starts hitting Save.

"Hey, um, Chuck, I thought we were meeting at your penthouse, but –"

Chuck flinches and deletes Eric's message.

His phone informs that he has no more new messages.

He double checks and confirms that Blair did, indeed, call – at 11:15 this morning. She must have hung up before leaving a message.

While he is staring at his phone, the ache that has been threatening to overtake his head all morning suddenly does exactly that. It feels for all the world like someone is stabbing at him from behind his eyes.

He could still call for more scotch. It's not too late. He could probably still cut this hangover off at the pass. He could probably keep this binge going for at least a week.

But when he lifts his phone again, her name is still on the screen.

**Missed Call: Blair Waldorf**

Before he even knows that he is committed to sobriety, he is reaching for the aspirin Eric left. He counts out five pills and chases them with a few gulps from the bottle of water on the chair.

Maybe, if he starts sobering up now, he can think about calling her back tomorrow… or the day after.

He grabs a few items blindly from the stack of clothes on the chair and slowly makes his way to the bathroom.

It isn't until the water hits him that he realizes how disgusting he has let himself get over the course of the past few days. Spilled scotch and sweat have dried on his skin and the grime flows off with the blood from his hand and his foot; he watches the filth pool at his feet.

When his hand hits the water, it feels like someone is holding a torch to it and so he tries to keep his hand out of the stream. He knows he will have to clean it eventually, but not yet –not when it still feels like his temples are collapsing in on his forehead.

There are little bars of soap sitting on the bathtub, but his motor skills aren't quite up to the challenge of unwrapping them, so he just stands under the hot water.

He rests his aching head on the tile in front of him and stays there until he doesn't smell scotch and perspiration anymore.

When he finally gets out of the shower, he forgets to dry off and so his plain white button down and navy slacks cling damply to his skin.

He feels like glass is still cutting into his palm, over and over. The aspirin hasn't kicked in.

He wanders weakly to the living room and lies down on the sofa, telling himself that waves of nausea are not crashing over him.

He never throws up from alcohol - not the night of and not the morning after. The last time he got sick to his stomach from drinking was in 8th grade, the year he and Nate first discovered that the Captain never seemed to notice whether his decanter was full or half full or empty.

That year was like boot camp for his stomach. Since then, it has been strong enough to withstand anything.

Well, it used to be, anyway.

He makes it back to the bathroom just in time.

_"Do you feel better?"_

_Blair had slipped into Nate's bathroom at some point while Chuck was vomiting. He might have been embarrassed if he had been a little more sober._

_"He's gonna know." Chuck moaned._

_"Maybe you should skip –"_

_"I can't."_

_Skipping dinner with his father was not an option. Bart only scheduled dinners with his son every few weeks and Chuck suspected that failing to show up would put an end to the sporadic ritual altogether. Of course, showing up drunk would undoubtedly have the same effect._

_"Ok." Blair leaned down and smoothed his hair back._

_"I didn't mean to get drunk." His arms were folded over the toilet and he rested his head on them. "It's just …"_

_It was just that dinners with Bart were so terrible and so important. They consisted primarily of awkward silences and lists of all the ways Chuck had disappointed Bart that month. But, every so often, Bart stumbled across something vaguely nice to say and so Chuck always made himself available when his father's assistant called and he secretly lived in fear of the day his father would inevitably decide that eating with him was a waste of time._

_Alcoholic fortification was an absolute prerequisite for these dinners, but, at thirteen, the line between fortified and inebriated was still elusive._

_"I know." Her cool hand was touching his burning forehead and, though he had never spelled out any facet of his relationship with his father for her, in that moment, he was convinced that she really did know._

_"Thanks for coming." He murmured as she stood and walked to the sink._

_She turned and gave him a small smile. "Now I know you're drunk."_

_Only marginally more sober than Chuck, Nate was busy surviving his own family dinner. He had called Blair for help when he realized that Chuck was sick and might be late to meet Bart if someone didn't get him home. Nate had snuck her in the back door and then splashed his face with cold water before marching downstairs to do his best impression of someone who hadn't just helped his friend drink every drop of single malt in the house._

_That's how Blair Waldorf came to be kneeling on her Valentino skirt, holding a cup of water to Chuck Bass' lips and wiping his chin with her bare hand._

_This was not the sort of picture that Gossip Girl ever got her hands on and so most people probably would have been surprised to hear that this was not an atypical Friday night for Blair Waldorf._

_Blair was always the designated piece-picker-upper when things fell apart._

_When she showed up on "Spotted," Blair was destroying reputations; she was plotting her way to queendom; she was backstabbing and scheming; she was refusing to so much as cross the street for anyone if there wasn't something in it for her._

_But Chuck knew there was a list of people – a very short list– for whom Blair would fly halfway across the world and walk through fire. All of her hard edges fell away the second these people needed her. At the first sign of a crisis she would drop everything and came running. In those moments, the Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl transformed into someone else – someone who was calm and comforting and, most importantly, always there._

_The names 'Serena' and 'Nate' were indelibly written on Blair's list. It didn't matter how angry they made her or how much they hurt her; she still sat in the emergency room for hours every time Nate was injured in a match and she still tracked Serena all over the city every time her best friend wandered off wasted._

_Chuck couldn't fathom why, but he sometimes suspected that his own name had been tacked on (in pencil) to Blair's list. It took him awhile to figure it out because she was still such a snarky ice queen most of the time. Besides, when she helped Nate, she often incidentally ended up helping Chuck. He never really believed that he was the intended recipient of her efforts until one night when they were at a party that got raided. Nate was out of town that weekend and Serena had already left with some guy. Blair was possibly the only sober person at the party so she heard the sirens before anyone else; she could have been out the door and home before the cops even got there. Instead, she went from room to room until she found an extremely stoned Chuck and then pulled him into a bathroom, locking the door. She flushed the hash that she found in his coat and she helped him out the window, where they hid on the fire escape until the cops left. (She swore off house parties for a year after that)._

_Still, he never called Blair for help the way Nate and Serena did. He was Chuck Bass. He was perfectly capable of helping himself. (Also, he was secretly convinced that his name had only ended up on her list by accident. One day she would almost certainly realize that it didn't belong there and erase it.)_

_"Look at me." She lifted his chin and sighed when she met his bleary eyes. "Can you throw up again?"_

_"I don't know." He groaned and lowered his head back into his arms._

_"Well, try. That's how you get sober."_

_"I can't." She was rubbing circles on his back and he just wanted to go to sleep. Maybe if he slept for ten minutes, he would be sober when he woke up._

_"You can."_

_"No." He moaned. His stomach muscles ached already and he hated the idea of making himself gag._

_"Am I going to have to stick my finger down your throat?" She threatened idly, brushing his hair back from his face. "C'mon, Bass. It's not that hard. Trust me."_

_"How would you know?" Blair never got drunk. Blair got tipsy, but she made it a rule to never have more than two or three glasses of wine in a night._

_"Because …" He glanced up and was surprised to see her deer-in-the-headlights expression. "I just know, ok?"_

He doesn't think of that as one of the many nights when he miraculously sobered up in time for a four course meal with his father.

He thinks of that as the night when he should have known.

Sometimes he tells himself that, if he had pressed her for a better answer back then – at what must have been the beginning – maybe he could have stopped her before it became a full blown disorder.

He tucks these kinds of "what ifs" into the back of his mind for safe keeping. They make excellent torture devises. When he is feeling particularly masochistic, he takes them out and forces himself to examine them from every angle.

But, at this particular moment, he is having difficulty focusing on anything other than the fact that he has just puked his guts out for the first time in years and his hand is still burning like it's been set on fire.

When he first hears the knock, he mistakes it for the pounding in his head.

He struggles to his feet when the sound persists.

He forgot to text Eric. He doesn't know what time it is, but he is afraid it might technically be 'tonight' and that his step-brother has arrived with 'reinforcements.' With Lily out of town and both Nate and Serena not speaking to him, that leaves only the Brooklyn contingent.

The idea of Rufus Humphrey standing in the hall does nothing to alleviate his nausea.

He braces himself against the frame before reaching for the handle. When the door is finally open, he breaks into a cold sweat that has nothing to do with alcohol withdrawal.

His eyes travel from her platform Jimmy Choos, up her silky, black and white dress to her face.

"Blair." It's the only word he can manage.

He is both relieved and alarmed to see that she has apparently spent the past few days reconstructing her armor. There is no trace of the girl from the other night – the girl in wrinkled pajamas with red rimmed eyes. The woman in front of him is flawlessly painted and curled. Her dress is impeccably accessorized with a black belt and a pearl broach. Her mouth is set and her eyes are sharp. She looks unbreakable. She looks like Blair.

"I'm not ready." He blurts out, because it's obvious that she finally is and he can't – he can't - hear the words right now. The very thought of hearing them sends more vomit to his throat. He swallows hard and begs her with his eyes. He has no right to ask for a continuance, but he throws himself on her mercy anyway. If she ends things right now, he might curl up in a ball and never get up again.

He watches her watch him and, on top of everything else, he is suddenly self consciously aware of his appearance. He has passed out, but he hasn't really slept in days. He knows his eyes must be bloodshot and framed with dark circles. His skin must be sallow from alcohol. Despite the shower, he knows his hair is a matted mess and he is barely supporting his own weight.

She saw enough of him like this in the months following Bart's death to last a lifetime. He never wanted her to see him like this again.

He closes his eyes, as if he is all of two years old - as if that will make him invisible to her.

"That's not why I'm here." He is surprised at how soft her voice is when she finally speaks. He opens his eyes to find her stepping inside. "Eric called this morning. He was worried and I didn't know how to tell him that – oh my God."

She drops her purse and reaches for his arm. She turns it so that his palm is facing up.

"What did you do?" She gasps when she gets a better look.

One of her hands holds his elbow and the other his wrist. Even through his sleeve, her touch is scalding. It burns, it cuts deeper than the gash on his hand.

"It's nothing." He closes his fingers over his palm, embarrassed and confused. He tries to pull his arm back, but he is so tired and dizzy and she isn't letting go.

She pries his fingers open. "There's … is that glass?"

He stares at her, uncomprehendingly. She picks up her purse and takes out her cell phone.

When she dials the front desk and asks for a first aid kit, he decides that this is more excruciating than any revenge she could possibly devise. The prospect of hearing her end things was unbearable, but this is a million times worse.

He could take it if she froze him with a smile. If she were enjoying his pain like she should be, he could take it. But she is reducing him to ashes with her worried eyes and he doesn't know how long he can burn like this.

"Come here." She leads him to the dining room table and he follows because he is Chuck and she is Blair and what else can he possibly do?

After he is seated, she starts to walk towards the kitchen and he suddenly remembers how he hurt his hand in the first place. "Wait, don't go in there."

His voice reaches her just as she is about to cross the threshold. She stops in her tracks, surveying the damage. She takes out her cell again and calls down for the maid before disappearing into the bathroom.

There are empty bottles of scotch littering the suite and he desperately wishes he could kick them under the sofa the way she kicked the empty chocolate boxes under her bed. He feels like every protective layer has been ripped off and the barest touch could finish him. He wonders if this is how he made her feel when he showed up in her room the other night. He hopes she has never felt like this.

There is a knock on the door and she emerges from the bathroom to get the first aid kit. She sets it on the table next to him and then leaves again.

It isn't until Blair is kneeling in front of him with a towel and a bowl of water that he puts it together.

She is here in her capacity as designated piece-picker-upper.

She is still going to leave him. She still probably hates him. But, after everything, he is still on her list. She has yet to erase his name and this knowledge is what finally guts him.

His eyes swim with unshed tears that have nothing to do with the tiny forceps she is using to pull shards of glass from his hand.

"Blair," He chokes out. "Please stop."

"I know it hurts." Her soothing tone twists at his misery.

"No." He moans. "It's not that. Just - Please. Stop."

Blair pauses for a second, long enough to look up and meet his eyes. She studies him for a moment and, as he studies her back, he thinks that – maybe - he sees a flash of pleasure at the guilt she must read on his face. She looks down quickly, but he clings to the belief that she is somehow enjoying this.

He cannot sit here and watch Blair fall into her caretaking role after everything. But, if this is somehow intended to torment him, he can endure it.

"You'll get an infection." She murmurs, continuing her ministrations.

He would prefer an infection, but he forces himself not to tear his hand away. If she wants to punish him with kindness, he has no right to stop her.

She stands up after a few minutes, straightening her skirt and setting the bowl of water on the table.

"I put hydrogen peroxide in the water." She warns before taking his hand and placing it in the bowl. He bites into his other fist, stifling a scream.

She is holding his hand in the liquid and, as the pain lessens and his breathing returns to something approaching normal, he realizes that her thumb is rubbing calming circles on his wrist. It is possible that she realizes it at the same moment he does because the motion stops abruptly. She lets go of his hand and reaches for the gauze.

She begins cutting strips.

"What are you doing down here?" She breaks the silence after a few moments.

It takes him a moment to realize that, when she says 'down here' she means 'in this suite that is not the penthouse.'

He wonders if she really doesn't know or if she just wants him to say it.

"I –" If she wants him to say it, he will. "I couldn't stay there after …"

He hopes she won't make him finish the sentence. He's not sure that he can.

"Oh." She pulls his hand out of the bowl and dries it off, carefully dabbing at the cut.

He thought he could ask what happened, but now he knows that he can't. The question won't form on his lips.

She squeezes anticeptic cream onto his palm and rubs it in with her fingers.

He takes a sharp breath through his teeth, but the pain fades after a few seconds and her fingers remain. Of their own accord, his fingers close around hers. She is staring at their hands and it takes her a moment to pull away – but she does.

She reaches for a strip of gauze and begins wrapping his hand.

"I know you're not ready now, but we can't keep putting this off." She says when the cut is covered.

"I know." He mutters as she secures the gauze with tape.

She is standing directly in front of him and he thinks how easy it would be draw her in, wrap his arms around her and rest his throbbing head against her chest. She might let him - for a few seconds anyway. He fights the temptation though. She would only push him away eventually.

There is another knock on the door and Blair leaves to answer it, taking the bowl and the towel with her.

When she returns, there is a maid behind her who walks straight to the kitchen.

"Tomorrow." Blair announces when she is standing in front of him again. "Can you be ready tomorrow?"

He wants to say no. He wants to scream it. He wants to plead with her to stay, to crawl into bed next to him tonight and let him hold her until morning.

Instead, he nods.

"You'll find me?" She asks.

He nods again, lowering his head.

He listens to the click of her heals walking away, but then the noise stops. The click comes back in the other direction and he looks up to find her a few feet away.

"You don't deserve to know this." She begins and then pauses, as if debating whether to go on.

He doesn't deserve anything at all and so he is baffled when she continues.

"But …" The clatter of glass reaches them from the kitchen and she takes a step closer, lowers her voice. "Nothing happened … with Jack. We didn't … He told me and he let me go."

It should be good news, but her eyes are brimming with tears and he is swallowing a lump in his throat because they both know it doesn't really matter.

What didn't happen in the penthouse matters exponentially less than what could have happened and they both know what could have happened.

"Thank you." He whispers, but she may as well have kept the secret for all the relief it brings him.

Blair turns and walks out.

He tells himself that he can go back upstairs now, but, the second he seriously considers it, all he can see is a montage of Jack holding Blair in a hundred violent positions.

He drags himself to bed and the montage plays on repeat until he mercifully falls asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

_No one's gonna love you more than I do_

_But someone_

_They should have warned you_

_When things start splitting at the seams and now_

_The whole thing's tumbling down_

_Things start splitting at the seams and now …_

_It's tumbling down_

_Hard_

_- Band of Horses_

* * *

The conch pearl is pink.

A saleswoman is babbling about its "stunning" flame structure and the "brilliant" five carat diamonds that surround it. At least, that's what she was doing before Chuck stopped listening.

He'd tell her to save her breath, but he suspects that she is enjoying the sound of her own voice.

He'll have to buy it when she stops talking. He's already left Harry Winston and Cartier empty-handed.

"Mr. Bass?"

To be in a relationship with Blair Waldorf is to be a permanent fixture at Tiffany's. He's a card holding preferred customer. The salespeople know his face and his name. They know the size of his bank account. They smile and flatter and vie for the exorbitant commission his purchases generate. He encourages their pandering; it amuses him.

In the past, it has amused him.

Today, it is having the opposite effect – a subtlety this particular saleswoman has yet to pick up on. She is unrelenting in her sycophantic perkiness.

She pounced on him the second he stepped in the door. She asked after the Empire and "the lovely Miss Waldorf" with a too-personal smile. Un-phased by his monosyllabic responses, she continued to prattle as she physically steered him to her counter.

That was almost two hours ago and his standoffishness has done nothing to dampen her resolve.

"Mr. Bass?" She repeats.

She has shown him countless necklaces- countless broaches, watches, earrings, bracelets …

He has rejected most of them out of hand. The rest he has stared at, unseeing, for a minute or two before shaking his head.

The saleswoman keeps asking what he's looking for and he keeps sidestepping the question.

He doesn't know what he's looking for.

Well, that isn't exactly true.

What he's looking for is a short cut - from where he and Blair are right now to where they are going (we're inevitable, his own words reassure him). What he's looking for is a fast-forward button - wrapped in a blue box and tied with white ribbon.

The diamond rings promise to fit this description. They are magnets and they pull at him. They beckon like sparkling last-best-chances. It's all he can do to keep his distance.

He does though, keep his distance. He won't let the saleswoman show him any rings.

Something tells him that proposing under these circumstances would only be an insult - to the future he knows he still has with Blair, to the perfect story he knows she's always dreamed of telling.

He's seen the scrapbook (prom was only the first volume).

Nine year old Blair snipped a diamond ad from one of Eleanor's magazines. She sketched hydrangeas next to pink champagne. She wrote "forever" in her best calligraphy. She traced a heart and copied Etta James lyrics in the middle. She pasted a picture of Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn slow dancing on a tennis court.

Noticeably absent from Blair's scrapbook is any sign of an impending break up. There is no place in her storybook engagement for hastily thrown together words from a boy trying desperately to press fast-forward.

That's why he keeps his distance from the rings.

It isn't deference exactly. It's more visceral - the very idea of desecrating Blair's girlhood fantasy makes his skin crawl.

Besides, deep down, he knows that the diamond rings are a pipedream. The biggest diamond on the shiniest band still isn't what he's looking for.

What he's looking for doesn't exist.

"Mr. Bass?"

He loosens his tie, but it remains strangely difficult to swallow.

This, he supposes, is what he's been avoiding with scotch and feeble pleas for more time.

This is the moment he's been dreading: standing in front of a necklace worth more than he pays most employees in a year and knowing that the purchase is futile but making it anyway because there is nothing else he can do.

"I'll take it."

Today already feels like a memory. It's been set in stone since the moment he agreed to Jack's terms.

That's ok though. Tomorrow, he tells himself, is what really matters.

Tomorrow he will come back and pick something else, something better. He'll bring Blair flowers every day after that. He'll alternate jewelry and peonies until he comes up with a grander gesture.

After a few weeks, she'll change her mind. And if not, she will after a few months.

He has nothing but time to fix this.

These are the things he repeats in his head as the saleswoman leads him to a register.

When he hands over his credit card, there are dollar signs dancing in her eyes. She gives him a conspiratorial grin. "Miss Waldorf is a lucky girl."

Her words settle in the pit of his stomach.

"That's debatable."

* * *

He forgot to have his suit pressed this morning.

There is a particularly egregious wrinkle on the lapel. He runs his hand over it – as if that will make it disappear.

He knows that a sleepless week and a residual hangover have left his eyes shot to hell with blood. He knows that there is a cut on his cheek from a botched attempt at shaving. He knows that his hair refuses to lie flat no matter how many times he smooths it.

But it's the wrinkled suit that really bothers him.

The elevator opens with a muted ding.

"Nate was right." Serena's expressionless voice greets him.

He scans the room until he finds her sitting on the sofa, legs tucked, Vogue in hand. Her face is mostly hidden behind Sarah Jessica Parker's. He isn't convinced that her cryptic words are meant for him until she looks up from the magazine.

Inscrutable is not a word that he normally associates with Serena, but it's the word that springs to mind when her eyes meet his briefly before returning to Vogue.

He steps into the foyer. "What was Nate right about?"

After their last encounter, there is no question as to where he stands with Serena. He isn't sure why he rises to the bait. Maybe it's because the air around Serena crackles with barely suppressed hostility. It's like touching a hot plate: he already knows it's going to burn him, but he can't resist finding out exactly how badly.i

"He thought you'd show up today." She flips to another page.

"You didn't?"

_What to Wear Everywhere._ He absently skims the cover of the magazine Serena is pretending to read.

_Let's Talk About Sex … How Clean is Your Water? … A City, A House, A Love Story …_

"Nope."

"Blair asked me to find her."

"I know."

"I told her I would."

"Yeah, well." Serena dog ears the corner of the page she's reading before turning it. "You've told her a lot of things."

_He's closing the hotel; it's over._

Except Serena doesn't know about that.

Does she?

It's possible that, by now, Blair has told her the whole sordid story, but he finds neither confirmation nor refutation of this in Serena's averted eyes.

He decides that she's grasping at straws. He decides that it's his guilt adding significance to her words.

His gaze wanders to the staircase.

"Is she here?"

The silence stretches so long that he's convinced Serena isn't going to answer.

"Yes."

Serena has clearly cast herself in the role of gatekeeper, but it's not as if she can stop him. It's not as if he needs her permission.

He inches toward the stairs.

A dull thud sends his eyes darting back to the sitting room. Serena has tossed her magazine aside and is now staring at him accusingly.

"I know you haven't been sleeping at the Empire."

The non sequitur catches him off guard. It pushes him into defensive auto-pilot.

"Checking all 980 rooms must have taken you awhile."

"Don't try to be cute." She stands up. "Nate's been staying at the penthouse, so I know-"

"Nate's been staying at the penthouse?" He deflects. "Trouble in paradise, S.?"

This time he's the one grasping at straws. He doesn't expect to actually hit a nerve, so he's surprised when her jaw clenches. He's surprised at the defensive edge that creeps into her voice when she responds.

"Don't project your relationship meltdown onto us."

Interesting.

"I wouldn't dream of it." His voice is mocking, but his heart isn't in it. There's only room for one 'relationship meltdown' on his mind right now.

He takes another step toward the stairs, but Serena moves quickly to cut him off.

"Tell me where you've been." She persists.

There are still pieces missing from the puzzle of what Serena does and doesn't know, but it's obvious that neither Eric nor Blair have given her a full debriefing. Chuck's not really feeling up to the task himself.

"I don't have to tell you anything."

Her glare intensifies.

"No, you don't." When she speaks, her voice is caustic. "You're Chuck Bass - no one has to tell me what you're doing when you stay out all night."

If she's trying to insult him, she's wasting her time. He's too emotionally exhausted to feel anything as superfluous as offense.

Perhaps sensing that her words are not having the desired effect, she continues.

"You couldn't even wait a week before crawling back to your whores?"

It feels a little like a sucker punch, but there's something forced in her delivery that softens the blow.

_Whores_ is not a word that falls naturally off Serena van der Woodsen's tongue.

Serena is naturally careless, but she is not naturally cruel. It's the reason she was never queen. Granted, Serena was the anointed one back in middle school and, granted, she toyed with the requisite 'mean girl' persona from time to time. But, at her core, Serena was never cut out for the role that fit Blair like a glove.

She lacks the killer instinct.

She's already shifting uncomfortably.

"Think what you want." He mutters.

If Chuck knows anything about Serena, he knows that she doesn't have the stomach to fight someone who isn't fighting back.

That's why he's surprised when she takes another step in his direction.

A few seconds of silence tick by before he realizes that she isn't moving in to attack; she's staring at his hand.

He follows her eyes to the gauze he clumsily taped in place this morning. The cut is starting to bleed through – not a lot, just enough to leave a faint red ring around his palm.

He immediately shoves his hands in his pockets, out of sight.

She continues to stare.

"Seriously, Chuck." Her tone isn't exactly neutral, but the edges are muted. "Where have you been?"

She moves a little closer and he finds himself taking a step back. As her eyes flit from his hair to his face to his pockets, he is, once again, acutely aware of his wrinkled suit.

"You tell me, Sis. You seem to have it all figured out."

Her eyes bore through his pocket to his injured hand.

"Nate's worried about you." She says abruptly, like a confession. "He won't admit it, but he is."

Chuck doesn't really allow himself to consider the possibility that Serena is anything other than mistaken.

"That's heartwarming." He shrugs to reinforce his indifference, but Serena continues as if she hasn't seen or heard him.

"I keep telling him that, if you're not camped out at Victrola, you're probably just shacked up with some high priced call girl." She chews on her lower lip. "I'm right, aren't I?"

He is searching for the response most likely to end Serena's inquisition when he hears a distinctive click-clip approaching from above.

There is no mistaking the sound of Blair's heels hitting the floor. Maybe it's the unapologetic force with which her feet make contact with the ground. Maybe it's her marginally accelerated speed. Maybe it's the syncopated rhythm when she lands just a little harder on every fourth of fifth step.

As far back as middle school, Blair would click-clip up behind him and he would greet her without turning around. She would demand to know how Chuck always knew it was her and he would profess psychic ability with a wink. The response drove her crazy (which was, of course, the fun of giving it).

Then came the months he spent subconsciously straining for the sound, hating the inevitable flutter when he caught so much as an echo of it. The noise reverberated in his chest. It built anticipation and then it cut him to ribbons. There were days he skipped school just to escape the taunting click-clip of her unattainable feet.

The sound still has a strange effect on him. Sometimes he'll pick it out in the middle of a crowded party or catch it on the other side of the penthouse and it will make his stomach flip. It carries the promise of comfort and permanence. It carries a hint of the way she sways when she click-clips to his bed wearing nothing but Louis Vuittons (Keep them on, he occasionally rasps when she reaches him).

Today, however, the sound takes on a new shade. It sends dread crawling from the base of his spine through his entire body.

Amazingly, Serena doesn't seem to hear the noise that's louder than sirens in his head. ii

"Am I right?" Serena refuses to let it drop.

She doesn't seem to notice that he isn't looking at her anymore, that his eyes are trained on the staircase.

"Right about what?"

Serena's head whips around when she hears Blair's voice. "Right about – right about nothing."

Serena catches Chuck's eye to let him know this isn't over and then retreats toward the sitting room. She looks back over her shoulder at Blair. "I thought you were packing."

"Turns out, my room isn't soundproof." Blair says without smiling. She crosses her arms when she reaches the bottom of the stairs. Her eyes skim Chuck before landing on Serena. "I asked you to send him up when he got here."

"He_ just_ got here." Serena lifts her chin defensively.

There is a strange friction in the room and it dawns on Chuck that his presence isn't the only source. Tension stretches taut between the two girls.

He might be curious, except that Blair's eyes have settled on him and every coherent thought has temporarily left his mind.

He had a speech prepared. He can't remember it.

Serena retrieves her purse and jacket from the sofa.

"You don't have to leave." Blair says halfheartedly when Serena crosses to the elevator.

Serena slides her arms into her jacket and then calls the elevator. "I'm meeting someone anyway."

Blair arches an eyebrow. "Who's 'someone'?"

The elevator doors open.

"Are we sharing now?" Serena glances meaningfully in Chuck's direction.

She steps inside the elevator and disappears.

It's only after Serena is gone that her words sink in.

I thought you were packing.

His heart drops into his stomach.

He struggles to find his voice. "You're leaving?"

Blair's silence answers for her.

"Where are you going?"

He wills her to say the Hamptons – far enough to show that she's serious; close enough to show that she wants to be chased.

Of course she's going to the Hamptons. It's part of his punishment.

He'll rent that house on the beach she's always loved. He'll implement his peonies and jewelry plan from there. He'll drive back and forth for meetings in the city. He'll -

"Paris."

His mouth goes dry. When he opens it, his tongue sticks to the roof.

"When are you coming back?" He asks, without really needing to hear the answer. The look on her face tells him that this is no week-long trip to visit her parents.

"I don't know."

He can hear the blood rushing in his ears.

Paris isn't punishment.

Paris is giving up.

"You don't want to go Paris." His voice comes out strange and unsteady. "You don't want to leave me. I know you don't."

When she paces toward the dining room without offering confirmation or denial, he is gripped with panic.

"I made a mistake, Blair – I know I made a mistake. But you have to give me time. You can't just run away to France without giving me time to fix this."

She is shaking her head when she turns back to face him. "You can't fix this, Chuck. This isn't fixable."

He stares at her uncomprehendingly.

"Everything is fixable."

Doesn't she know that? Doesn't she know that they can smash each other into a million pieces and it won't make any difference? The jagged edges will still fit together when they scrape themselves up off the ground.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what he does to her – just like it doesn't matter what she does to him. They're still Chuck and Blair. They can fix anything.

"You're wrong." She says. "Something like this – you can't just erase it. You can't undo what you did –"

"What we did."

It's not the card he wants to play, but he has no qualms about playing it. He has her on a technicality and he has no problem exploiting it- not if implicating her in his crime will guilt her into staying in New York.

"I couldn't have done it without you." He presses. "You made a choice."

She flinches as if he's slapped her and he instantly knows that he's hit the wrong button.

"You think I don't know that?" She folds her arms protectively around herself. "You think I don't feel sick every time I think about it?"

She walks further into the dining room and he follows at her heels.

"Hey." He grabs her by the arm and turns her to face him. "I didn't mean – I just meant … we did this together, we can undo it together. We can -"

"We didn't do it together. That's the point. We both did it alone."

"Semantics."

He doesn't understand why she winces. He doesn't understand why she won't meet his eyes when he takes her hands.

"Look, I don't expect you to move past this today or tomorrow or … but you can't leave like this. I love you, Blair. Everything else is just … beside the point. " He clings to the words that have always saved them, says them again with weighty emphasis on every syllable: "I love you."

She runs her thumb along the side of his injured palm before carefully removing her hands from his.

"Your hand doesn't look good, Chuck. You should see a doctor."

He feels his mouth drop open. "I don't care about my fucking hand. I'm telling you that I-"

"I heard you. I love you too." She walks to the other side of the room, putting the dining room table between them. "But those are just words."

She looks down at her hands as they grasp the chair in front of her. "I don't even know what they mean when you say them anymore."

It feels exactly as if she has kicked him in the stomach.

The full and complete list of things Chuck considers sacred in this world goes like this: the back of his limo and those three words.

What he means when he says them is forever.

She knows that.

He didn't hold out on her for over a year because he was afraid to name an emotion. The emotion went without saying. It went without saying that he liked/admired/adored/worshipped her. Blair knew from Define like that she gave him butterflies. He doubts that she ever truly questioned the extent of his passion for her. His feelings were never the issue.

The words stuck in his throat only because he knew why she wanted to hear them. He knew the words came attached to an implicit, irrevocable promise. He knew the words foreclosed the possibility of escape hatches and exit ramps.

He couldn't make that promise until he was prepared to keep it.

When Chuck finally said 'I love you,' he might as well have said 'til death do us part' because that's what he meant.

He thought that was understood.

He thought she felt the same way.

What did 'I will stand by you through anything' mean if not that she was in this for keeps? What the fuck did 'I'll always be here' and 'I'll always be your family' mean without the 'always'?

She can't take it back.

But, he suddenly realizes, that's exactly what she's doing.

"_You_ don't know what _I_ mean? _You're_ the one packing." He bites out when he can finally speak. "No one walks, Waldorf. I thought that was the deal."

"That was only part of the deal."

What she says is accurate. It's also irrelevant.

Yes, there were countless layers to the unspoken agreement the two of them made last year. And yes, he has violated several dozen of them.

But every single layer rested on a foundation that made the rest of their lives a foregone conclusion.

"This – isn't what I signed on for." She says slowly. "I can't do it. It hurts too much."

She's staring out the window and he knows what she means because it's physically painful, the way she won't look at him. It's excruciating, the way she's single-handedly dismantling everything that means anything to him.

"I kept putting this conversation off." She continues. "I kept - thinking I could find a way past what happened. I tried, but-"

"You tried for one week." His intention is to attack, but his voice comes out shaky. It undermines the effect.

"I'm sorry, Chuck." She is still staring out the window. "But I can't try anymore. I can't."

She makes her way back into the sitting room, and something like desperation seizes him. Words pour out of his mouth before he has a chance to consider them.

"I swear to God, Blair, if you end this and take off for Paris - if you bail on me now - I will never forgive you."

He can't take it back and he isn't sure he wants to, so, instead, he holds his breath.

He waits for what seems like an eternity.

"I know." Blair finally says. "I guess that makes us even."

He listens to the click-clip of her heels as she walks away.

He doesn't know how long he stands frozen in the dining room.

When he reaches into his jacket pocket, he discovers the forgotten jewelry case from Tiffany's. He pushes it angrily to the side.

He gropes for what he's looking for until he finds it.

His wallet was a Christmas gift from Nate. It's almost five years old, but Chuck has kept it because it's Hermes and CBB is engraved on the leather and it makes him smirk every time he thinks of the note that came attached: to hold everything you hold dear.

He opens it and unclasps the silver, heart-shaped pin he finds inside.

He leaves it sitting on the dining room table when he leaves.

* * *

She's all legs and wavy red hair and green cat eyes. No woman has ever looked less like Blair.

He takes her back to the penthouse. Not because he particularly wants to. Just because he's Chuck Bass and it's what everyone expects from him anyway. Just because he has to do something to keep from falling to the ground and screaming until he can't scream anymore. Just because scotch isn't going to cut it and he can't get in touch with his dealer.

Just to prove that he can.

To prove that nothing matters

"Nice place." She says when they walk out of the elevator. "You live here alone?"

"I'm not paying you to make conversation."

Theoretically, he's paying her to make this ache in his chest disappear for just a few fucking minutes, but so far he's not getting his money's worth.

She follows him to his room.

The ache only gets worse when her hands settle on his hips.

Out of habit, he leans away when she tries to kiss him.

_Uh uh._

_Why not?_

_It's better to wait_.

He can't stop himself from glancing at the door. This is Blair's cue.

_What the hell is going on?_

Except this isn't a game and Blair isn't going to barge in, all scorned and hot and bothered.

"No kissing." He mutters.

_I'm upset because I kissed somebody that wasn't you._

The girl nods, as if this is a perfectly normal request, and reaches for his belt buckle. Her lips attach themselves to his neck while he sheds his jacket and tie. Her fingers make their way under his waistband.

Her skin is soft and her nails are freshly manicured. Her shoes have red soles and her dress is satin. This is not a girl who works a corner. This is a girl who floats from alderman to stockbroker; governor to minor celebrity. There was a time when he would have considered her quite a find.

That time is not now.

He forces himself to touch her.

There is a zipper running down the front of her dress. He slides it halfway down and finds her braless. She is looking up at him with perfectly rehearsed come-hither eyes and he is searching for the switch that used to shut off his inner monologue. He can't find it, but he cups her bare breasts anyway.

There's something sickly calming about her bare skin under his hands.

It comes back to him in a rush: the numbness of sex with no strings; the way he doesn't have to feel when he loses himself in a stranger's body; the terrible lightness of it and the empty satisfaction.

He begins to maneuver the girl towards his bed.

_Jack's teeth scraping at Blair's chest._

The girl misinterprets Chuck's sharp intake of breath and moans in response.

He freezes.

He closes his eyes against the steady stream of images that invade his mind.

He silently commands them to stop.

This has to stop.

Nothing happened in this room last week. He knows now that nothing happened in this penthouse at all.

Nothing. Happened.

_Jack's nails clawing at Blair's back._

He resists when the girl tries to pull him down with her onto the mattress. His hands fall from her body.

He presses his fingers to his temples.

The girl touches his arm and he jerks away.

She stands up and he turns his back to her.

She takes a step towards him.

_Jack's hands at Blair's neck as he thrusts …_

"Get out." He manages.

"Are you ok?" It's an obligatory question. Her tone is apathetic.

"Just. Get. Out."

"Fine."

When he opens his eyes, she is already grabbing her purse from the corner where she dropped it earlier.

He leads her back the way they came.

"I want my money." The girl says as she zips her dress.

He reaches into his wallet and grabs a handful of bills. He doesn't bother counting them out before shoving the cash in her direction. "Take it and leave."

She doesn't have to be told twice. She calls the elevator herself.

When the doors close behind her, he runs a hand over his face and turns around.

He starts when he sees Nate watching him from the open door of his room.

Chuck finds that he can't look Nate in the eye, so he looks at the space above his shoulder.

Nate doesn't say anything for what feels like minutes. Finally, Chuck says the only word that comes to mind.

"Hey."

Nate snorts. When he speaks, his voice drips with disgust. "What is wrong with you?"

"You want a list?" Chuck's voice sounds blank even to his own ears.

"Serena was right." Nate mutters.

_I keep telling him that, if you're not camped out at Victrola, you're probably just shacked up with some high priced call girl._

Chuck gives no sign of knowing what Nate is talking about. He shrugs, still avoiding the other boy's eyes.

Nate doesn't wait long before shaking his head and disappearing into his room. He closes the door behind him.

Chuck could go back to the 17th floor, but, it doesn't really make any difference where he goes, does it? This feeling will follow.

There is nothing, nothing in the world but the gaping emptiness ripping him to shreds.

Perversely, he returns to the epicenter of the images.

Once he's back in his room, the images fade in and out. Each one is worse than the last and he cringes at the incredible detail his subconscious conjures – from the tiny birthmark on Blair's back to Jack's uneven stubble.

Revulsion combines with the strange sensation that his insides are combusting in slow motion.

He stumbles to his en suite bathroom and turns the shower on full blast, not knowing exactly why.

He leans against the wall.

Bart hated the sight of tears. There must have been some childhood incident that instilled this awareness in Chuck, but he has no recollection of it. As far as he is concerned, he was born knowing that Bass men don't cry; they perhaps choke up under extreme circumstances, but their tears never actually fall.

Chuck can count on one hand the number of times he has allowed himself to break this rule.

… One …

_In retrospect, Bart was drunk._

_He stumbled in just as Chuck's nanny-of-the-moment was saying goodnight and happy birthday._

_"What's so happy about it?" Bart demanded from the doorway._

_The nanny quietly slipped out._

_It was dark in Chuck's room, but the hall light illuminated Bart. There were shadows covering most of his face, but Chuck could still see his father's expression. He didn't know why exactly, but it made him shrink under the covers._

_"God, you look just like her." Bart muttered. "Why do you have to look just like her?"_

_Bart never (ever) spoke of Chuck's mother except to point out the physical resemblance between his son and his dead wife. Even those references were few and far between._

_Chuck should have known better, but he had to ask while the door was cracked. "What was she like?"_

_Bart didn't hesitate. "She was complicated."_

_Chuck tucked the word away. He would ponder it later. But, first, if Bart was answering questions, he had to ask one more. "How did she die?"_

_Bart gave an empty laugh. "How do you think she died?"_

_"Uncle Jack says she died in a plane crash." Chuck repeated the only part of the story his uncle could keep straight. First the crash was in the Andes, then the Himalayas, then the Alps …_

_"A plane crash, huh?"_

_Chuck nodded while his father studied him with glazed eyes._

_"You want to know how she died?"_

_"Yes, Sir."_

_Bart took a few steps toward Chuck's bed. There was nothing particularly menacing about the movement, but Chuck's heart still sped up._

_"She died eight years ago today." Bart said slowly, placing slurred emphasis on each word._

_Chuck didn't understand that his question had been answered. "How?"_

_Bart stared at him without speaking. Finally, he turned and walked away. "Figure it out, Chuck."_

_He did, figure it out._

_The knowledge woke him in the middle of the night. It strangled him with emotions he had no frame of reference for._

_He cried until his throat burned and his stomach throbbed._

…Two …

_There had been tears stuck behind his eyes for days. Blair released them when she threw her arms around him._

_She didn't say a word when she pulled him down beside her on the bed._

_She wiped his cheeks with her thumb._

_Eventually, she curled up behind him._

_"I called him. I told him to come." He choked out the horrible truth at some point. "I'm the reason he was on the expressway."_

_"It's not your fault." Blair pressed her lips to the space behind his ear._

_She stroked his hair until the hitch subsided from his breath._

_The words slipped out before he could stop them. "Say it again?"_

_"It's not your fault." She murmured._

_"No." He didn't understand why he couldn't let it go, but he couldn't. "Not that."_

_He felt her stiffen._

_He knew it wasn't a fair thing to ask of her. He knew he had no right to bring it up at all. He knew she was still raw from 'that's too bad.'_

_On some level, he knew those things._

_All he really knew in that moment, though, was that he could feel himself flying apart at the seams and her words from earlier that day were holding him together by a thread. All he knew was that he had never needed anything the way he needed to hear those words again. Maybe it was selfish, but he was a selfish person and she already knew that._

_"Are you going to say it back?" Her question was tinged with hope and he suddenly wished he had kept his mouth shut. Her tone pierced through his grief-induced haze to cut at him._

_He closed his eyes and turned his face toward the pillow his head was resting on._

_He knew that his prolonged silence had answered Blair's question when she took a shaky breath._

_"I love you." She whispered anyway._

_He felt her bury her face in the nape of his neck. He felt the scattered pieces of himself slide loosely back into place._

_He grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips._

_"Thank you." He sighed before drifting into his first peaceful sleep since before the accident._

… Three …

_Chuck had been keeping it together by sheer force of will. He lost it somewhere between the Upper East Side and NYU._

_The tears wouldn't stop. He held his breath, thinking lack of oxygen might suppress them. It only made them flow faster. It only made him gasp for air._

_After years of straining, he had grown accustomed to the weight of his mother's death. He had learned to carry it. It had settled on his shoulders. It had still been heavy, but it hadn't crushed him anymore._

_To have that weight lifted only to have it replaced was almost unbearable. In the span of a few short weeks, he had forgotten how to lift it. And now, he was suffocating under it._

_Losing Elizabeth (lying bitch) was no loss at all._

_Regaining the guilt he had so recklessly cast aside was the real tragedy._

_The guilt got mixed up in his rage at Jack and his despair over the Empire. The cocktail left him incapacitated even after the limo pulled up in front of the dorms._

_He commanded the hot tears to stop running down his face. He refused to even consider seeing Blair until they obeyed._

_Blair._

_He took a long, unsteady breath._

_Maybe he would carry the guilt of his mother's death to his own grave. Maybe he would spend the rest of his life fighting Jack. Maybe it would take years to regain control of the Empire._

_So what?_

_He wiped his eyes._

_He had Blair and there was no way he was backing down from the rest of it._

… And four …

He doesn't know how long he has been standing here, watching condensation gather on the mirror.

The steam is making everything damp, from his clothes to his eyes.

He sinks to the cold, hard tile.

There has been something clawing at his throat since he heard the word Paris.

He is powerless to control the violent sobs when they finally wrack his body.

* * *

i Inspired by How I Met Your Mother.

ii I just discovered Florence and the Machine. The Lungs album is gorgeous beyond words; I highly recommend it if you haven't already heard it. "Louder than sirens" is a line from Drumming Song.


	7. Chapter 7

_Did you not come here lookin for a fight?_

_They say brown liquor make you sleep alright_

_Cocaine make you grind your teeth all night_

_Well, who's that callin? Is that your little darlin?_

_Will she come runnin or will she go back crawlin?_

_On your hands and knees, baby, don't you tease_

_Sugar mama cut you off at the knees_

_Well, guess that's what you get_

_When you were leaning on me, I heard you askin for it_

_- Cary Ann Hearst_

* * *

His eyes are closed, but the light still scorches through to burn the back of his sockets.

When he finally drags himself out of bed, it's only to close every shade in the penthouse.

He can't see where he's going and the coffee table trips him and the shades are stuck and the cords are twisted and he can't figure out who the fuck did this. Nate hasn't shown his face in days and housekeeping hasn't so much as knocked since he fired that maid last week for barging in unannounced.

He gives up on the shades when they're half closed and falls onto the sofa, exhausted, sun still searing his eyes. His veins are pulsing to the frantic beat of his heart and he can't swallow without cringing. His hand is shaking when he lifts it to wipe his nose and there's a thin smear of blood on the back when he lowers it.

That last purchase was probably a mistake.

"It's like a cave in here," a too-loud voice from down the hall grates on his last nerve.

Serena.

Perfect.

His sigh becomes a groan when he hears her footsteps getting closer.

"If you don't like the atmosphere," Chuck's voice is hoarse from non-use, "feel free to get the hell out."

His eyes have drifted shut, but they fly open when something smacks him in the back of the head.

"Ow!" It doesn't really hurt. It does, however, piss him off. "Have you lost your mind?"

"Have _you_?" He squints up at her and sees that she's waving a tiny bag in his face. "I found this in the kitchen."

He instinctively grabs for the bag, but she holds it above her head and, the truth is, he doesn't care enough to sit up and fight her for it. He feels like absolute shit and that bag is, at least partly, to blame. He has no real interest in reclaiming it. At this moment, his only real interest is in leaning back and throwing an arm over his eyes.

"Much as I appreciate your stopping by to burn my corneas, rifle through my things, and assault me, Nate's not here, so –"

"I know. He's at the Breakers - if you care."

He doesn't. If Nate would rather camp out at the Vanderbilt compound with his estranged family than share a penthouse with his supposed best friend, Chuck couldn't care less.

"If you know Nate's not here, then you know visiting hours are over. I'd see you out ..." He readjusts his arm to cover more of his face. "... but you know the way."

He hears a creak when she sits on the edge of the coffee table. "I'm sorry, am I keeping you from your busy schedule of coke and prostitutes?"

He exhales loudly and rolls over to face the back of the sofa.

He doesn't feel inclined to clarify that there were only three prostitutes - three horrifically failed encounters - before his stomach joined the rest of his body in revolt. He doesn't tell her that the very idea of a fourth attempt is enough to produce debilitating waves of nausea.

I'm sorry, I'm not laughing, he hears Serena giggle from somewhere in the distant past, it's just so obvious you're not over Blair – come on, this is your body's way of telling you.

Somehow, he doesn't think she'd find it so funny this time.

There's nothing funny about the violent images that refuse to leave him in peace.

"It's 3PM on a Friday, Chuck." She pushes. "You don't work anymore? The Empire is – what? Running itself?"

"I'm taking a long weekend." He mutters into the cushions.

"Ten days long?"

Every muscle in his body tenses. His jaw clicks and, he swears, if she starts talking about what happened ten days ago …

"Look, I get that you're upset about losing Blair, but –"

"Do. not." He growls. "Just… don't."

It's as much a warning it is as a command. He's covered in gasoline. Serena should think twice before throwing matches his way.

He lets out the breath he didn't realize he was holding when he hears Serena stand up. He turns to lie on his back, grabbing a throw pillow to cover his eyes.

The sound of clinking glass is accompanied by a curse.

"This place is a mess." He listens as she apparently picks through the bottles littering the floor. "… so are you."

Serena always did have a flare for the obvious.

As if he doesn't know he's a mess. As if he hasn't been excruciatingly aware of that fact ever since he woke up crumpled on the bathroom floor that first morning (stomach muscles tangled and sinuses pounding and nothing left to cry but blood).

He's been falling through this bottomless pit ever since and it's enough to make him sick: the way he can't pull himself up – can't get a good grip or a foothold on the Empire; can't find anything else to grab hold because there is nothing else.

Blair took everything.

Without her, he doesn't even have himself. The uncomfortable fact of the matter is that he has no reference for Chuck Bass without Blair Waldorf's blistering cruelty and unflinching support and shameless pride and baffling insecurity and jagged wit and defiant strength and surface chill and pervasive heat and incisive schemes and unconditional loyalty. Her contours and sharp edges have been his touchstone. She inhabited him long before she slid across the seat of his limo to become inextricable. It's been seven years since she found him on a beach in the Hamptons; seven years since he began defining himself against their quips and their plots and their silent language and the dance they were dancing before he even realized their feet were moving.

And he's so angry at her, it chokes him.

Because, yes, he knows - he knows what a pitiful mess he is without her.

And so does she (I'm not Chuck Bass without you).

And she left anyway.

"… hey, are you even listening to me?" Serena's voice breaks through.

"No."

She gives a long suffering sigh. "Well, pay attention. I left your hash on the counter – that's one thing. But this-" He hears the crinkle of plastic. "this is just … phenomenally stupid. I'm getting rid of it."

He's had just about enough of Serena and her sanctimonious tone.

"Phenomenally stupid…" He repeats with unhurried derision. "That's rich, coming from the girl who once referred to speedballing as a 'rite of passage.'"

"I was a fifteen year old idiot. I hadn't seen coke kill someone yet." Her voice is practically dripping of Public Service Announcement, but it's her obnoxiously rhetorical question that pushes him over the edge: "Or have you forgotten about Pete?"

"The co-star of the Serena van der Woodsen sex tape? Not likely."

Her stunned silence is followed by an incredulous laugh. "Unbelievable."

"Just trying to follow along." He lifts the pillow from his eyes, a thrill of cruelty making the light bearable. "You're going to have to clear something up for me though - was it cocaine that killed Pete Fairman or was it you? Because I seem to recall –"

"I'm trying to help you, you jackass."

"I don't want your help." He says in a low voice.

"You think I care what you want? I'm not doing this for you." She snaps. "I am sick of standing by and watching you spiral into these pathetic, self absorbed benders. If you were only hurting yourself, I would gladly keep my mouth shut, but, amazingly, there are people who still care about you and they're the ones who get hurt when you turn off your phone and binge for days on end. If you cared about them at all, my mom or my brother or my – Nate, you would start returning their calls so they can stop wondering if you're ok."

Serena should know better than to think she can shame him. She should know by now that he has no shame. And, even if he did – even if her little speech had produced a microscopic wave of guilt, the effect would have been spoiled by the loose thread that's just screaming to be pulled at.

"Well, that was awkward."

There's something satisfying in her transition from self righteous fury to utter confusion. "What?"

"Please. The painfully obvious way you just failed to call Nate your boyfriend." He pushes himself up on his elbows. "What happened? Nate finally succumb to your step-sister's plebeian charms?"

He watches Serena's face fall.

The idea that Jenny Humphrey poses any real threat to Serena van der Woodsen may be objectively laughable, but Serena isn't exactly objective when it comes to Nate.

He'll have her out of here in two minutes or less.

"It was only a matter of time, I suppose. We all know Nathaniel shares your weakness for Brooklyn trash. But Little J is still jail bait, isn't she? I'm surprised he didn't at least wait until–"

"You're disgusting." Serena turns on her heal and walks into the bathroom.

Mission accomplished.

A few seconds later he hears the toilet flush.

The van der Woodsen siblings officially owe him half an eight ball and a bottle of scotch.

"Buy more or don't. Either way." She says as she emerges from the bathroom. "I won't be bothering you again."

"Don't tease."

He sinks into the sofa and watches Serena reach into her pocket to pull out her key fob. It lands with a dull thud when she tosses it on the pool table.

She turns back towards Nate's room.

It isn't until she's standing next to it that Chuck notices an oversized, paisley tote sitting in the hall. She slings it over her shoulder and then reaches for the garment bag hanging from Nate's door.

And it doesn't make the least bit of difference to him.

It doesn't make any difference at all.

So, he can't explain why he asks: "You're … actually picking up your stuff?"

"What do you care?" She bites on her lower lip and, for a second, he thinks there might be tears in her eyes, but it must be his imagination because her voice is steady when she speaks again. "Jenny had nothing to do with it, so don't go telling Gossip Girl that she did."

Chuck doesn't even subscribe to Gossip Girl anymore, but he doesn't feel compelled to retort with that information. Strangely, he doesn't feel compelled to retort at all. It's something about the way she's standing there looking at him - like she's braced for a punch that he suddenly has no interest in delivering.

He shakes his head, but it still takes a few moments for her shoulders to relax. When they finally do, she eyes him suspiciously. "Alright ... I'm leaving."

She starts towards the elevator, but stops with a heavy sigh.

"I said – I promised I would tell you …since you're not answering your phone," She turns back, all but dragging her feet. "It's just a last minute, family thing at the Waldorf's but … Dorota and Vanya are getting married tomorrow and Dorota thought you should be invited, since, technically, you are – you know, family … technically."

"Technically." He repeats without emotion.

"No one expects you to come." Serena hastens to add. "You're obviously in no condition and the last thing Dorota needs on her wedding day is for you to show up and create some scene that will inevitably leave Blair in tears. I think it would be best if-"

"Wait." It's the only word he can manage while his thoughts race to catch up with the jolt running down his spine. "Blair's in Paris."

Serena fiddles with the zipper on her garment bag. "I, uh … I thought you knew she hadn't left yet. She-"

"She didn't leave?" He sits up slowly - sunlight forgotten.

"Yet." Serena repeats deliberately. "She postponed. Dorota asked her to stay for the ceremony, so she postponed her trip. For Dorota."

Serena has all the subtlety of a kick in the teeth.

He gets it.

"What time is the ceremony?"

The look that crosses Serena's face is almost sympathetic. "She didn't stay for you, Chuck."

He gets it.

He fucking gets it.

"What. time. is the ceremony?" He grates out for a second time.

"It's at eight, but, Chuck …"

He isn't listening anymore.

* * *

The sun is long gone, but the blinds are still half open and city lights are bouncing off the furniture. He stares at the shadows they create. He traces the long, distorted lines with his eyes. He looks anywhere to keep from looking at the phone in his hand.

He isn't going to call her.

It's bad enough that Serena probably hadn't even made it to the lobby this afternoon before his beige Brioni suit was on its way to be pressed; that a check to the order of Mr. and Mrs. Vanya Kishlovksy is already made out and tucked in his wallet; that he's sitting here trying to decide whether it would be easier to schedule his driver for tomorrow or just take a cab.

He hates that it isn't even a question; that, after Serena's unintentional revelation, his attendance at the ceremony isn't so much a choice as a compulsion. If it wasn't such a laughable lie, he might tell his ego that he would have gone anyway.

As it is, he is attempting to salvage his pride by dropping his Blackberry. He is willing his fingers to loosen their grip. He is … running his thumb over the trackball.

The names fly by in a blur, but, after an evening spent scrolling through his missed calls, he could tick them off without looking - from his lawyer to his secretary, Serena to his private investigator, Eric to his stock broker to Lily to his accountant to Nate …

She hasn't called him.

And he wasn't expecting her to call from Europe, so he isn't sure why he would expect her to call from 5th Avenue. There's no good reason why her abandonment cuts just a little deeper now that he knows she's still in town; no explanation for why it feels like a new level of betrayal. All he knows is, his jaw aches because he can't stop grinding his teeth and maybe it has something to do with the fact that Blair didn't have to put an ocean between them to stay away. Central Park has been the only thing separating them for over a week and, apparently, she's had no trouble keeping her distance.

He reaches for his scotch, traces a finger through the condensation that's gathered on the outside of the glass.

He wishes he didn't believe Serena. It would be different if he could tell himself that Blair was thinking of his ultimatum when she delayed her trip. But delusional fantasies aren't his department; they're Blair's. Last time he saw her, she was all hard eyes and set mouth and he knows that look ("This thing between us, it's over for good). He's seen it before ("I'm sorry, but I'm done."). He knows it means game over. Chances are, she's written him out of her thoughts entirely - edited their relationship down to nothing and locked it in the cutting room for now. It's a coping mechanism he's watched her fall back on time and again.

When Chuck falls apart, it's on contact. Blair, on the other hand, dissolves in slow motion. He knows her and he knows she is capable of willing herself numb for weeks, months at a time.

He takes a sip and swishes the alcohol, but he can't wash away the acrid taste in his mouth. He swallows hard, but the harsh lump in his throat remains. Yes, this is all his fault, but so what? Maybe he's lost the right to resent her but that doesn't mean he's lost the ability; that he doesn't hold it against her - the way she's obviously pushed him to the back of her mind (the way she haunts his every fucking thought).

It's maddening that she's known exactly where to find him this entire time and yet, hours after discovering her proximity, he's the one who can't stop himself from scrolling through his address book, hovering over her number, pressing send.

And she doesn't even answer.

_"You've reached Blair Waldorf. Leave a message and I'll consider listening to it."_

_"Look …" The word tumbled out of his mouth before he could catch it._

_Shit._

_He hadn't planned on leaving a message – hadn't planned on calling, for that matter. As he scanned the hazy suite (the site of his exile), it occurred to him that he might be a little drunk._

_The silence expanded so that the sound of ice clinking against glass seemed unnaturally loud when he swirled his scotch. He couldn't bring himself to voice any of the thoughts rolling around in his head, but it was too late to hang up and so he sat quietly with the phone pressed to his ear for what must have been at least a minute._

_"I'm … not sorry." He finally heard himself say._

_"I'm not sorry that Jenny Humphrey has perfect aim or that everyone knows you had to wash yogurt out of your hair in the bathroom before first period on Monday. I'm not sorry that your army of bitches has defected and I'm not sorry that everyone saw the blast about your so-called friends standing you up at Butter the other night."_

_He raised his drink to his lips and took a long, slow gulp - then another. He paused while the alcohol burned a trail down to his stomach and loosened his tongue._

_"I'm - not sorry for what I said the last time we talked. And… I'm - not sorry for what I wrote in that tip to Gossip Girl. I'm not sorry for sending it."_

_He ran his index finger absently around the top of his glass._

_"Blair, I'm …"_

_He couldn't._

_Drunk or sober, he had nothing more to offer._

_Blair could play the innocent martyr all she wanted, but she knew what she had done. His stomach still churned when he thought about the way she had treated him - the way she had tossed him aside like a dirty mistake, like he hadn't been her best friend on top of everything else. He wasn't about to play along while she pretended he was the only one who had fucked up. He wasn't about to put himself at her mercy so she could stomp all over him one last time for good measure. His instinct for self preservation absolutely forbade an explicit apology._

_Anyway, it didn't matter. She would know what he meant (she always did)._

_The words were there. She could choose to hear them or not._

_"That's all. I just wanted you to know that I'm not sorry."_

_He stared into his scotch without really seeing it._

_"And that I don't miss you."_

_He ended the call and tossed the phone across the sofa, watched it slide between the cushions._

This time, Chuck ends the call before her voicemail can beep at him. His phone lands with a crash when he drops it on the floor. He wanders towards his room, kicking an empty bottle out of his way he goes.

* * *

It's been weeks since he's slept in the fullest sense of the word, so he's already half-awake when he hears it. His phone has stopped ringing by the time he identifies the sound, but he's on his feet anyway.

When he reaches the living room, he feels his way to the sofa and then drops down to crawl on his knees. He reaches blindly underneath the coffee table, the chair. He is barely breathing when his hand finally makes contact with his Blackberry.

_It was early morning by the time Serena left. After days of false accusations, her profuse apology should have felt like vindication. Instead, it felt strangely irrelevant._

_It was only Georgina's note that had exculpated him. Without it, he could have sworn on a stack of Bibles (his life, his billions, his scarf), said the pledge of allegiance backwards and forwards while hopping up and down on one foot – she still would never have believed he hadn't sent those stupid gifts._

_Not that he had ever considered Serena's good opinion particularly worthy of cultivation. Serena wasn't the point. It was Bart's elusive approval that had been the center of his universe for as long as he could remember and it was Bart who hadn't even asked to hear Chuck's side of the story before kicking him out. Chuck's banishment to good old suite 1812 was proof positive that his father had even less faith in him than Serena; that earning his trust was a pipedream._

_Chuck closed the door behind his step-sister with a parting promise to look into Georgina's whereabouts and he felt nothing beyond exhaustion._

_Remembering that his phone was still stuck between the sofa cushions, he retrieved it on his way to bed. He had already kicked off his shoes and was sprawled on the mattress when he finally glanced at his messages._

_Second later, the phone was clutched to his ear._

_"FYI, that was the worst non-apology I've ever received in my life." came her voice, followed by a long pause._

_His eyes drifted shut while he waited, listening to the distant sounds of traffic and music. In his mind, he placed her in a cab with the windows down, radio just a little too loud, on her way home from somewhere or other. When she finally spoke again, it was in a rush, as if a dam had burst:_

_"And you'll be happy to hear that I was just publically humiliated at Butter for the second time this week … and Jenny Humphrey may have perfect aim, but, turns out, she's also a raging klepto, so, feel free to blog about that next time you're in the mood to ruin someone's life via Gossip Girl and … get this, she's pimping Nate out to Penelope as penance. And he's letting her. I can't even think of anything more pathetic … except maybe, you, if you actually think that voicemail fixed anything between us … and I drank three martinis tonight, so, as far as I'm concerned, I never even listened to your message, let alone called you back … and …"_

_The silence stretched, but he thought he could make out the faint sound of her breathing._

_Finally, he heard her give a quiet sigh._

_"… and I don't miss you either."_

_A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, even as the message ended abruptly._

This time, he's not sure how long he's been kneeling here, but the hard wood floor is starting to dig into his knee caps and there is no message.

Maybe she would have just hung up if he had answered. Maybe she was only calling to tell him never to contact her again. Maybe she dialed his number because she had a little too much wine at Dorota's bachelorette party or rehearsal dinner or whatever pre-wedding celebration he wasn't invited to attend tonight. Maybe she won't remember this in the morning.

But none of that changes the fact that, right now, he's staring at her name on his missed calls screen. It's 2AM and she's awake and she's thinking about him and that has to mean something.

* * *

He sits in the limo until exactly 7:55 and it's all he can do not to pour himself several drinks and get absolutely plastered while he waits. He thinks adrenaline might be the only thing keeping him upright at this point. His knee won't stop bouncing up and down, and, by the time he makes his way into the elevator, he is practically wringing his hands.

"Charles!" Lily's arms are around him before he even sees her coming. He returns her embrace a little awkwardly, but, the truth is, he's never been happier to see his step-mother. "When Eric told me you had called this morning and that you would be joining us tonight, I was so -"

"I should apologize. I meant to call sooner, but-"

"Nonsense. I know how busy you must be with the Empire. I'm just glad you're here now."

She leads him from the elevator to the sitting room, where the furniture has been rearranged and twenty or thirty white folding chairs are facing the staircase in short rows. The decorations have Blair written all over them, from the soft glow of long stemmed candles to bursts of pink peonies scattered through-out the room.

"Though, speaking of the Empire," Lily is whispering in his ear, "we should really talk later because I ran into one of your board members at a benefit the other night and-"

"Well, well, look who actually showed up for once." Eric interrupts with a good natured smile, approaching from behind Lily to squeeze Chuck's arm.

"We'll talk later." Lily murmurs and Chuck supposes he should be curious, but he's a little distracted because the gang's all here and no one is bothering to pretend they aren't staring at him.

Brooklyn Sr. is giving him a tight lipped smile and Brooklyn Jr. has quickly averted his eyes to whisper something in Girl Brooklyn's ear. Little J. has whipped out her phone and he can practically hear the click when she snaps his photo for Gossip Girl. Serena looks vaguely displeased, if not surprised and … he does a double take, because, yes, it's Carter Baizen; not on an oil rig in Texas, but sitting next to his step-sister in the second row. Chuck locks eyes with the older boy and Carter gives him a smirk that's just begging for a fist to wipe it off.

There was a time when Carter Baizen sightings didn't feel like a kick in the stomach. It wasn't so very long ago that Carter's presence meant free joints, entrée to the best underground strip clubs, and access to fake I.D.'s . In middle school, Nate openly fawned all over the guy while Chuck quietly studied him (before there was _"I'm Chuck Bass"_ there was _"Hello, Beautiful._"). But stories of cigars smuggled through customs and small fortunes hustled in European pool halls and trust funds doubled at the Melbourne cup have been long since replaced with stories of missing watches and sloppy poker scams and pseudo humanitarian, faux anti-capitalistic bullshit.

If Chuck's being honest, though, he could probably forget all of that. What he can't forget is the queasy coiling in his gut when he found Blair drinking scotch in a black satin negligee and heard the words _"except she's not alone"_ from the dining room.

Chuck will never understand Serena's perennial attraction to this smarmy, opportunist son of a bitch.

And suddenly, Nate's conspicuous absence is no mystery.

"Saved you a seat." Eric motions him to the back row, behind a small, boisterous group that Chuck supposes must be family to either Vanya or Dorota.

A foppish teenage boy is waiting for them when they slide into their seats. Eric introduces the boy simply as "Elliot." Elliot stammers a greeting and his palm is sweaty when he shakes Chuck's hand, but it isn't until Chuck catches Eric blatantly searching his face for a reaction that he realizes Elliot must be Eric's date. Chuck raises a teasing eyebrow at Eric, but deliberately withholds a look that might connote approval; it remains to be seen whether this kid is good enough for his step-brother.

Chuck is about to ask how they met, but the cellist in the corner is already starting Canon in D.

Vanya emerges from the dining room with the minister and someone Chuck supposes must be the best man. The violist and pianist join in after the first stanza, but all he can hear is the sound of Blair's heels on the second floor.

He swears that he feels her eyes on him for a split second, but when he tries to meet them, she is looking straight ahead. She makes her way down the stairs with a strained smile and Chuck wonders if everyone can see how exhausted she looks. He wonders if it's a trick of the candlelight or if she's really managed to lose such a disturbing amount of weight since the last time he saw her.

He's still angry at her, he reminds himself. But he can't seem to conjure the emotion.

When Blair reaches the bottom of the stairs, she stares at the floor until Dorota enters and then she stares at Dorota along with everyone else. But Dorota could be wearing a paper bag for all Chuck knows because he is watching Blair pick at her nails, a habit she broke years ago.

The minister begins to speak and Blair doesn't look in Chuck's direction once, but he knows she can feel him watching her. He can tell by her ramrod straight back and the way she's chewed all of her lipstick off by the end of the ceremony.

When Vanya and Dorota are pronounced man and wife, there's a cheer from the group he's pegged as family and Lily rests her head on Rufus' shoulder and Vanessa pretends not to notice that Dan is unabashedly making eyes at her and Carter has the nerve to slip his arm around Serena and Eric sighs a little wistfully, but the only thing that really matters is that Blair gives her first genuine smile.

She stays motionless at the front of the room when Vanya and Dorota start greeting their guests.

She still hasn't looked at him, but, when Chuck steps towards her, she makes a beeline for Carter and Serena. He doesn't even know what he wants to say to her, but whatever it is, there's no way in hell he's saying it in front of Baizen and so he sticks close to Eric for the time being.

There are cocktails and hor dourves in the dining room while caterers clear away the chairs in the sitting room to make a dance floor.

Chuck drinks a scotch with Elliot while keeping one anxious eye on Blair, who looks for all the world like she could fall over any second. Elliot takes his scotch on the rocks and tells Chuck about how he'll be at Columbia in the fall and how he wants to run his family's business after he graduates and how great Eric is and Chuck decides that maybe Elliot's ok.

"Congratulations." Chuck gives Dorota an obligatory kiss on the cheek when she appears in front of them.

She doesn't resist the gesture, but there is a sharp look on her face as she pulls away. She glances in Blair's direction and then beckons for Chuck to follow her.

She leads him a few feet into the kitchen.

"I think you misplaced this, yes?" Dorota asks, pulling Blair's silver pin seemingly out of her sleeve.

He stares at the pin without comprehension. "Did Blair give that to you?"

"I found when cleaning dining room last week." She explains, eyeing him carefully. She holds the piece of jewelry out to him. "It belongs to you … yes?"

"Not anymore." He backs away as if the pin might burn him on contact. "She doesn't want me to have it."

Dorota looks at him as he's just declared that one plus one equals nine. "How long you know Miss Blair?"

"Dorota, you don't understand–"

"How long?"

"Since kindergarten." He mutters.

"Fourteen years." Dorota nods, taking his hand and pressing the pin into it. "Long enough to know better."

"She left me. She's leaving the country. She doesn't want -" He tries to hand the piece of jewelry back, but Dorota has already slipped out of the kitchen.

When he follows, she's on the dance floor with Vanya.

A woman with a smoky voice has joined the pianist and she's belting out the last verse of Unchained Melody. As the singer transitions to Dancing in the Moonlight, Lily pulls Rufus onto the dance floor and Jenny is at their heels, Eric and Elliot both in tow.

He's already staring at Blair, but it's the song that makes her glance up at him. Their eyes lock across the room and, for a suspended moment, they are alone in the crowded penthouse.

_He didn't watch the whole thing, but he watched enough. Maybe he should have left sooner, but it was just such a perfect train wreck. He stayed because it took a few beats to wrap his mind around what he was seeing; to bask in the confirmation of his longstanding suspicions; to thrill in the endless possibilities for scandal and blackmail._

_Not that he had any intention of playing it, but he could actually feel the ace in his back pocket and there was a certain perverse pleasure in knowing that he suddenly had the upper hand on everyone of any importance in his life._

_He walked back into the reception on a power high. The bridesmaid he had been working on all night was standing near the entrance and she gave him a slow, sultry smile when their eyes met – which, in his vast experience, meant she was a done deal._

_He was feeling pretty damn good as he made his way back to his table and so it caught him off guard when his stomach turned at the sight of Blair._

_As far as he could see, no one else was paying any attention to her, but she still glanced furtively in both directions before downing her champagne in one gulp. She proceeded to tug self consciously at her dress and stare dejectedly at the suit jacket slung over Nate's empty seat._

_Watching her felt like having a bucket of ice water dumped on his head. He couldn't have explained exactly why, but, in that moment, Chuck wanted no part of the secret that was unexpectedly turning to lead in his chest._

_He slid into his seat, carefully avoiding Blair's eyes. He stared intently at the bride and groom stuffing cake into each other's mouths._

_"They look so happy." Blair sighed and there was a melancholy note in her voice._

_Chuck gave the couple two years tops. He had it on good authority that the new Mrs. Shepherd was a frigid bitch and Mr. Shepherd already had a mistress in Switzerland. But, rather than broach the topic of infidelity, he nodded absently at Blair's comment._

_"So?" She leaned an elbow on the back on his chair. "Are Nate and Serena ok or do we need to take them home?"_

_"I couldn't find them." He lied automatically._

_"This is so typical of them lately." She hissed. "I told them to get some air, not disappear into air."_

_"I'm sure they're around here somewhere." He muttered._

_There was a twisting feeling that he couldn't quite stifle and it occurred to him that it might be guilt - which was ridiculous. It certainly wasn't Chuck's fault that Nate couldn't hold his liquor or keep his hands off Serena or find a private place to cheat on his girlfriend._

_Blair nudged him in the shoulder. "What's with you? You're acting weird."_

_"Nothing, I just … think maybe I'm a little drunk." He said, not untruthfully, with a dismissive wave of his hand._

_"I guess that makes four of us." The uncharacteristic admission in and of itself confirmed her words._

_She exhaled loudly when the band started in on the first verse of Fever._

_"Nate promised he would dance with me. I'm going to look for him-"_

_"Wait." He caught her wrist in his hand before she could stand up._

_The idea that she might stumble into the right room was enough to make him ill. Chuck loved a good public scene, but this was one shit show he didn't want to see. He honestly couldn't have said whether he was trying to protect Blair or Nate, but either way, something like panic seized him at the thought of failing._

_"They could be anywhere and Nate's too trashed to dance anyway. Stay. Dance with me." He stood, pulling her up with him._

_Her eyes travelled from him to the exit. "But what about –"_

_"C'mon, Waldorf." He held out his arm for her to take, but she still hesitated. "You know, I've got moves."_

_"Oh, I'm aware." She gave an incredulous laugh. "But since when do you waste your moves on girls you aren't trying to seduce?"_

_"Since never." He winked when she finally took his arm and allowed him to lead her to the dance floor._

_"I think Nate might have something to say about that." Blair smirked, un-phased by his banter._

_He bit back the response that Nate wasn't in a position to say much about anything. "Then it's a good thing Nate isn't here." He murmured instead._

_She was holding her arms out as if she thought they were going to waltz, but Chuck rolled his eyes. He trailed his hands down her arms and pulled them behind his neck._

_Chuck rationalized that, if Nate was down the hall losing his virginity to Serena, he certainly had license to toy with crossing a few of the lines he and Blair had quietly drawn over the years. And she didn't resist when he snaked his arms around her or when he pulled her hips just a little closer than he normally would have ventured. He was almost surprised when she started moving against him to the beat. Almost._

_When she looked up at him, there was a twinkle in her eye. "If you're not careful, that bridesmaid's going to get the wrong impression."_

_"Bridesmaid?" He asked in exaggerated bewilderment. "Which bridesmaid?"_

_She snorted. "The one who's been eye fucking you all night."_

_He laughed out loud, Nate and Serena temporarily forgotten. "Dear Journal, today Blair Waldorf used the term 'eye fucking.' "_

_"Told you I was drunk, Bass. What's it going to take to convince you?" She asked in his ear and, if he hadn't known better, he might have thought she was flirting with him._

_"Maybe … this." He slid his hand dangerously low on her hip, staring her down in a challenge. She met his eyes without protest and he didn't try to account for the unmistakable wave of heat that passed between them._

_She broke eye contact when the band transitioned to Dancing in the Moonlight._

_She stopped moving and took a step back, but her hands remained on his shoulders. "I love this song."_

_"Everyone loves this song."_

_She laughed when he abruptly spun her out and back in close._

_Her skirt swirled around her and he remembered the way she had fussed in the limo on their way to the ceremony - about not being sure she had chosen the right dress for tonight, about how maybe she should worn her new Versace instead. Nate, oblivious as usual, had ignored her transparent fishing expedition._

_"You picked the right dress." Chuck heard himself say over the music._

_"What?" She looked up at him as if he was speaking a foreign language and she couldn't even begin to figure out what he was trying to say._

_"You look pretty tonight, Waldorf." he clarified quietly._

_The word felt strange and soft on his lips. Chuck knew the words most likely to talk a girl out of her clothes – extravagant words like 'stunning',' ravishing', and 'breathtaking'. He tossed them around to any marginally attractive girl in Manhattan. But Blair's hair was pinned up in loose waves and her dress was peach and silky under his hands and maybe he was partly drunk and maybe he was partly trying to distract her, but Chuck still thought that he had never meant anything quite so sincerely as he meant the word 'pretty' in that moment._

_"That might be more flattering if you didn't reek of scotch right now." But her voice defied the sentiment and he didn't miss the way she pressed herself infinitesimally closer as they danced through the rest of the song._

When Blair finally lowers her eyes, he realizes that Lily has been talking to him.

He half listens as he watches Blair excuse herself and run upstairs.

"… and, anyway, there are seven board members, aren't there?" Lily is asking. "It certainly isn't a catastrophe if one of them is planning to sell his shares. But I thought you should know just in case-"

"Yes, of course. I'll call my lawyer tomorrow. Thank you, Lily." Chuck says absently. "I'm sorry … if you'll excuse me for a moment…"

He maneuvers his way through the guests and follows Blair upstairs, two steps at a time.

* * *

He doesn't bother turning on a light, but he can still see that every piece of her European luggage is packed and piled on the far side of the room.

He has been sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at her suitcases, for a good twenty minutes when she emerges from the bathroom.

She starts when she sees him.

"What are you doing up here?" She demands weakly.

"What were you doing in there?" He returns, without any expectation of an honest answer. All he could hear was a faucet running, but there is nothing Blair could say to convince him she was washing her hands that whole time.

Instead of responding, she gives a long sigh. She is standing a few inches from the wall and she gradually leans against it, closing her eyes.

"Blair, were you-"

"Please don't." She murmurs.

So, he doesn't.

"Are you still going to Paris?" He looks down at his hands while he waits for the obvious answer.

"Tomorrow morning."

"Do you think I didn't mean what I said about never forgiving you?"

"I know you meant it."

"As long as we're clear." He bites out.

"I know you hate me." She says quietly, eyes still closed. "I hate you too."

Her words hang in the air while she slumps further against the wall and he returns his gaze to her luggage.

He is about to get up and leave, but a strange thought crosses his mind and keeps him stationary: she is pulverizing him with her every word and he is still more content than he has been in weeks. Maybe she's leaving tomorrow, but it's still a relief to be in the same room with her tonight.

Eventually, her eyes open to catch his. "It's exhausting, isn't it?"

"What's that?" He whispers.

"Hating each other."

He holds her eyes without responding.

"I haven't slept. Not really." She confesses and his pulse skips as she pushes herself away from the wall and walks towards him. "I'm so tired, Chuck."

He watches her every step as she makes her way to the bed.

He holds his breath when she sits down next to him.

He remains absolutely motionless as her head falls against his shoulder. He has the feeling that any sudden movements might send her running and so he doesn't so much as acknowledge her touch.

"I'm too tired not to be with you." She murmurs. ii

It gives him the courage to slide an arm behind her. When she doesn't pull away, he wraps the other arm around her. She lets him pull her back onto the bed so they're lying facing each other on top of the covers. He brushes a few strands of hair out of her face as her eyes fall shut again.

"Do you think maybe …" She whispers. "Can we just … call a truce for tonight? Can we just sleep?"

"Just tonight?" He can't keep the desperate edge from his voice. "But … you called me last night. You don't want to go-"

"Shh." She doesn't open her eyes, but her hand finds his cheek. "Just tonight."

If her breathing weren't already lulling him to sleep, he would say no. He would tell her that her terms are unacceptable and he would either convince her to stay forever or he would go or he would at least try to coax her into break up sex.

But, as it is, he is pathetically willing to take whatever she's offering.

He is shrugging off his suit jacket and loosening his tie. He is repositioning them at the head of the bed and wrapping a blanket around her. He is running a hand through her hair while she burrows closer and hikes a leg over his hip in their customary sleeping position.

"I don't hate you, Blair." He admits in a whisper before pressing his lips to her forehead. "I wish I did."

"I know," is her ambiguous answer.

He is actively fighting sleep. He is already dreading the moment when he wakes up tomorrow and this is over, but his eyes are heavy. He finds himself somewhere between dreaming and waking when he hears her speak again.

"You're right." Her voice is barely audible. "I don't want to go."

"Then stay." He matches her volume.

"I can't."

"Yes, you can." His forces his eyes open because this feels like his last chance and he isn't going to fall asleep in the middle of it. He finds her looking at him through hooded eyes. He reaches for her hand and clasps it.

"I just - don't know what to say to make you understand, Blair. I said I was sorry and you told me I wasn't. I said I wanted to fix this and you told me I couldn't. I said I love you and you told me those are just words. I keep thinking, if you would just tell me what you want to hear …"

Her eyes are glistening and he lets go of her hand to brush away a stray tear with his thumb. "But you and I … I think we've always been able to say more without words anyway."

She tucks her head under his chin with a sniffle.

"I've always heard you– in the silences." iii. He feels her fingers brush up against his and he isn't sure that he's making sense, but he hopes against hope that she knows what he means. "I need you to hear me this time, Blair. I need you to listen. Can you please try to do that for me?"

She doesn't answer, but she twines her fingers with his and he falls asleep thinking that maybe …

* * *

He can't taste stale scotch on his breath and he doesn't have a pounding headache.

That's how he immediately knows something is off.

It's the unmistakable scent of Clive Christian No. 1 on the pillow under his head that orients him.

But, even after he remembers where he is, he doesn't open his eyes. He takes a minute to brace himself because, deep down, he knows what he isn't going to find next to him.

He wonders hazily if this is how she felt the morning after his father's funeral.

It hadn't occurred to him that she would feel like this kind of hopeless dread mixed with despair. If it had, he might not have left – or, at least, he might have left a better note.

When he tears his eyes open, his instincts are confirmed.

She's gone.

So is her luggage.

There is no note.

* * *

**i From High Fidelity. One of my favorite lines of all time.**

**ii Inspired by a note Felicity writes Ben after she cheats on him in the fourth season of Felicity.**


	8. Chapter 8

_There's a secret magic password_

_That you only notice_

_When you're looking back at it_

_All I wanna do is turn around_

_I'm going down to sleep_

_At the bottom of the ocean_

_Cause I couldn't let go_

_When the water hit the setting sun_

_- Rocky Votolato_

* * *

The smoke stifles his breath and burns his throat, but he keeps coughing it out only to suck it back in. He keeps waiting for the hash curling in his lungs to dull this nauseous ache in his gut.

He hasn't moved in hours; hasn't left his room since he crashed, face first, into bed after his walk of shame this morning became an endless detour around the duck pond in Central Park.

Let it never be said he isn't a glutton for punishment.

It's 2AM in Paris.

She isn't leaving anymore. She's gone.

Her plane is landing at _Charles de Gaulle_ right about … now.

A forgotten tin of cinnamon lip gloss is lying on his nightstand. It's silver and white with an intricate red pattern around the edges. His eyes are closed, but he can still see it – just like he can still see the vanilla candles arranged on his dresser and the Manolos stacked in his closet.

Even 3,000 miles away, she's everywhere.

His shirt is drenched in hash and sweat and it still smells like her lotion and her hairspray and … her.

He takes a long drag and blows the smoke out in rings.

_"How do you do that anyway?" Blair brought a din of bad 80's dance music and boisterous shrieks with her when she stepped outside._

_"It's all in the tongue." He raised a suggestive eyebrow and inhaled to demonstrate._

_She leaned against the doorframe and watched his mouth form a string of hazy circles._

_Chuck waited for her standard gripe about the morning-after stench of stale pot in her hair, but it never came – not even after the breeze caught the smoke and sent it wafting through her curls. She was staring at him through the smoke rings, but her eyes were blank. If he had somehow missed the past two weeks, the look on her face alone would have been enough to catch him up._

_A chorus of drunken laughter seemed to bring her back to herself. She shook her head and closed the door behind her, effectively muting the noise._

_"This party is a disaster. I warned Hazel not to invite freshmen." She crossed through the smoke to join him at the other end of the balcony. "Speaking of which, that peroxide blonde from last weekend is downstairs looking for you."_

_"You mean Crazy Eyes?" He tapped his joint against the guard rail, sending ashes floating into the dark. "Why do you think I'm hiding up here?"_

_"Afraid she'll boil your scarf?"_

_"Terrified." He smirked, straightening the length of patchwork silk hanging from his neck. "Where's Nathaniel when I need a wingman?"_

_"He left awhile ago." Blair leaned forward against the railing, voice impassive. "He – hasn't been feeling well. I think he's coming down with the flu."_

_"Ah." Chuck brought the joint back to his lips. "Well, you'll do in a pinch, I suppose."_

_Smoke clouded the balcony, but he could still see her out of the corner of his eye. Her shoulders were tense and her brow was furrowed and she could pretend all she wanted, but he knew she was too smart to confuse pathetically transparent, love sick pining with the flu._

_If Blair hadn't put Nate's sudden onset depression together with Serena's recent disappearing act, it was only because she didn't want to._

_When his first joint of the evening started burning low, he crushed it on the railing and let it fall however many storeys to the sidewalk. He pulled a second joint out of one pocket and his lighter out of another._

_"Let me see that." Her voice broke the silence._

_He stared without comprehension at her outstretched hand until it finally dawned on him that she was asking for the joint._

_He turned to eye her warily. "You don't smoke."_

_"First time for everything."_

_"Says the virgin." He gave her half a leer, but held the joint out of her reach. "Look, you know I'm more than happy to assist in the popping of any of your many cherries, but –"_

_"But what?" She demanded, a confrontational edge entering her voice._

_"But … you seem a little –"_

_"I'm fine." She snipped with a smile._

_She looked up in a silent dare and he almost wondered if she wanted him to call her bluff._

_Who else would?_

_Nate was so lost in his own pain, he might as well have vanished with Serena. Blair's parents had barely been home all semester. None of her classmates had the guts to cross her. It was Chuck or it was no one._

_Which meant it was no one - because of course Blair wasn't fine (in the weeks since the Shepherd wedding, she had faded into a frenzy of AP classes and advisory elections and committee appointments and PSAT prep and freshman hazing and social climbing and all with an unnatural smile and a forced laugh and eyes that were sadder every time her mask slipped), but he couldn't see that saying it out loud would make it any less true._

_If she was in denial, maybe that was the best place for her. What could he possibly say to soften a reality where her best friend had abandoned her without so much as a goodbye and her boyfriend seemed less empathetic than heartbroken in his own rite?_

_Maybe lighting up that joint was the Blair Waldorf equivalent of sending up an SOS flare, but Chuck slipped it between her fingers anyway._

_There was no point in pretending he had anything else to offer._

_She held the joint awkwardly and struggled to work the lighter. He watched her exhale, emptying her lungs before bringing the joint to her mouth with something like determination. She inhaled with an impossibly long, deep breath._

_"Easy, Waldorf."_

_Almost on cue, she dissolved in a predictable coughing fit._

_When she was still hacking up smoke a few second later, his brought his hand lightly to her back. "Breathe."_

_But she was coughing too hard to obey. Afraid she was about to be sick (all over his new Berluti loafers), he led her towards a nearby chair._

_"Alright …" He took the joint from her hand while she was still doubled over. "That's enough lung damage for you."_

_"… disgusting …" She managed between coughs, eyes watering, tears running down her cheeks. "… and I don't feel anything."_

_"That's precious." He stuck the joint between his lips and tucked his lighter away. "You thought you were going to get high off your first hit?"_

_"First and last." She muttered as her coughing subsided._

_She dropped into the chair he had steered her to. She wiped her eyes, but the tears hadn't quite stopped yet. She wiped her cheeks, but they were wet again two seconds later. With an aggravated groan, she leaned her head back against the headrest and covered her face with her hands._

_"Hey." Vaguely alarmed, he took a step closer. "I'm sorry, I should have warned you-"_

_"Don't be ridiculous. I'm fine." She sniffled and made a strangled sound that might have been an attempted laugh. "I'll be fine."_

_Neither of them spoke while her breathing returned to normal and smoke rings once again floated from his lips towards the skyline._

_"Did you know there are nineteen private boarding schools in Connecticut?"_

_Her soft question made him freeze mid puff. It was the first reference to Serena's existence he had heard Blair make in days._

_"No, I didn't know that." He suddenly had the distinct feeling he was walking in a minefield._

_"Did you know every single one of them has a policy never to confirm or deny the names of enrolled students over the phone?" She was staring into the smoke, face turned away from his. "Something about security …"_

_"No, I didn't know that either." He said carefully, measuredly - as if he didn't understand that Blair was confessing to having called every boarding school in the yellow pages in search of Serena._

_He was looking at the Chrysler Building, but he could feel Blair's eyes settle on him._

_"I didn't want to bother her mom again, but …" Blair's voice was strained and he could actually hear her pride protesting with every word. "It just doesn't make any sense. Something must have happened - the way she left … Eric says he doesn't know anything and - Nate says he doesn't know anything, but … she talks to you sometimes and I just thought – you might know something?"_

_It shouldn't have fazed him._

_He bent and twisted and stretched the truth on a daily basis. He elevated deception to a form of art and he never gave it a second thought. So, it hit him sideways - the discomfort that accompanied his next sentence._

_"No, I don't know anything."_

He can taste it through the resin-filled smoke – the foul, gritty aftertaste that always comes when Blair is too tired or blinded or broken to question his lies or spot his betrayals. He's learned to ignore it, swallow against it, cover it with alcohol, but he's never quite learned to erase it.

It's been there - buried beneath the endless layers of bullshit that fell away when he fell asleep next to her last night. Without the self pity and misdirected anger, there's just this rancid, rusty flavor in his mouth.

He opens his eyes. He's looking at crown molding but what he sees is the vial of rose petal shampoo in his shower and the copy of Casablanca by his television and the biography of Grace Kelly on his book shelf.

He could box up her things, but he would still see them in every corner of the penthouse. He could light another blunt, but it wouldn't erase the image of her slumped against her bedroom wall last night, sunken cheeks and dark ringed eyes (the image of her slumped in that chair four years ago, coughing up smoke and drowning in unanswered questions while he watched instead of diving in after her).

She can leave him behind, but it doesn't make any difference where he goes. He couldn't escape her if he wanted to.

He takes one last drag and cringes at the coppery, muddy taste that won't leave his mouth. His hand gropes for an ashtray and, when he finds it, he leaves his blunt to burn itself out.

If he had grabbed a taxi to JFK and chased her down an airport terminal this morning …

If he had followed her upstairs and given her that conch pearl necklace last week …

If he had told Jack to go fuck himself last month …

But he didn't do any of those things and now it's too late to do anything at all, except stare at the ceiling of his smoke-filled room and wait.

* * *

"Uh … Chuck, do you think you could maybe … pass the sugar?"

"I could."

The sugar bowl is inches from his hand, but Chuck spends the next minute slowly cutting his mango tart into bite size pieces and taking a long, deliberate sip of coffee. He looks up in time to see annoyance (almost) overshadow the acute discomfort on Dan's face.

"Serena." But Serena is too consumed with her iphone to hear her ex-boyfriend slash step-brother or notice the over-the-top Can you believe this guy? looks he keeps sending her way.

Finally, Dan gives an exasperated sigh and reaches over Serena and a platter of mini pastries to grab the sugar bowl for himself.

"Hey, careful." Serena protests when Dan comes within inches of knocking over her cappuccino.

"Pardon my reach." He grits out, sending an accusing glare in Chuck's direction. But, when Chuck meets the glare without flinching, it's Dan who breaks eye contact first.

If Chuck had remembered that Lily and Eric now come attached to the Brooklyn Brigade, it might have taken more than three voice mails, eight text messages and a personal escort from Eric to get him to the Palace for Lily's birthday dinner tonight.

Three days.

Blair left three days ago and every day he feels more and more like his skin is turned inside out.

He's in no state to make nice with the Humphrey's.

"… just not sure where it would look best. Maybe in the foyer …" Lily's voice carries into the dining room, presumably still gushing over the signed Edward Weston photograph everyone got together to buy her as a gift (or, in Chuck's case, slipped Eric a check at the last second for the privilege of adding his name to the bottom of the card).

"But having you all under the same roof is the best gift I could ever ask for." Lily is peaking out of the kitchen with a fond smile. "This is just …perfect."

"You're perfect." Rufus comes up from behind Lily and turns her head to kiss her on the lips.

Chuck thinks he's pretty open-minded about his step-mother and her new husband, considering, but the sight of them practically making out is still enough to kill whatever appetite he's been pretending to have. He sets down his fork.

"If you'll excuse me …" Chuck mutters to no one in particular, leaving his napkin on his seat and wandering into the living room where Eric and Jenny are watching television.

"… wouldn't mind a little historical inaccuracy if it were well written, but the whole show is basically an excuse for lavish costumes and soft core pornography."

"Nothing you say will make Jonathan Rhys Meyer any less hot." Jenny holds the remote out of Eric's reach.

"Touché." Eric laughs. Jenny joins in and the happy sound is awful, abrasive.

Chuck runs a hand over his eyes and walks over to the bar to pour himself a drink. He sits in the corner chair he once considered 'his' and waits for the alcohol to calm his shot nerves.

He stares out the window to the soundtrack of Jenny and Eric, half watching The Tudors; half debating whether someone named Natalie Dormer makes a better or worse Anne Boleyn than Natalie Portman.

Eventually, it becomes easier to tune them out, to hear the timbre of their voices without listening to what they're saying. He's loathe to admit it, but there's a reason dinner is over and he hasn't left the Palace yet. It's a strange combination of prickling and soothing – having people around to distract from his thoughts.

"You look like death these days, you know that?"

He doesn't process the words until after he glances up and finds Eric is gone, barely visible in the kitchen. Chuck narrows his eyes when he realizes Jenny is staring at him.

"I understand it must be time consuming, pushing drugs and panting after your step-sister's boyfriend, but your social graces could really use some work."

Jenny's cheeks turn red, but she doesn't miss a beat. "For the record, I'm not particularly attracted to my step-sister's boyfriend. I find Carter's ethos slimy and his head oddly shaped."

Chuck snorts in spite of himself.

Not for the first time, he thinks he gets it - why Blair tried to make this girl her prodigy and why it never quite worked out. He gets how like and unlike Blair she is: all of the sharpness with none of the tact; all of the hunger with none of the finesse. Jenny is glaring at Serena with an expression he's seen on Blair's face, but it looks completely different – looks unbalanced - without Blair's underlying restraint.

He follows Jenny's gaze to Serena, who glances up when she feels him watching and then immediately returns her eyes to her phone. She hasn't made eye contact all night, but he takes her cold shoulder as the implicit favor it is. Maybe it's a favor to Lily, not him, but he's still grateful to be left in peace - without Serena's passive aggressive attacks and angry sidelong frowns.

Her hair is hanging in her face, but he can still see that she has that unmistakable look – the one she had last fall. It isn't a smile exactly. It's something in the eyes - something sparkly and secretive and a little guilty.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out who she's texting.

"She and Baizen are official?" He asks into his scotch.

"Might as well be. They're leaving tomorrow for Cabo or Jamaica or Florida or someplace like that." Jenny turns up the volume on the television, as if they aren't already out of everyone else's earshot. "Is, um … Nate back from Rhode Island yet?"

"You really don't waste any time, do you?" He gives her a condescending smirk and turns back towards the window.

"Why should I? Serena certainly doesn't."

He sneers. "You, Little J., are no Serena."

"Maybe not … but I'm not like you either. I can't just sit back and do nothing while the person I want to be with slips through my fingers."

His face is turned away, half lost in his drink, half lost in shadows - but she cuts off the 's' on 'fingers' anyway, almost like she can see the way his eyebrow twitches before he can stop it; like she knows she's gone too far, rubbing sandpaper on inside-out skin.

Her uninformed opinion hangs, clipped in the air.

"A word of advice." His voice is low and expressionless when he finally finds it. "Don't talk about things you don't understand."

"I understand more than you think." She murmurs, but she has the good sense to shut her mouth after that.

She understands nothing.

Three days.

Blair left three days and he's waiting on broken glass for her to regroup, heal, forgive, call, come home because what the fuck else is he supposed to do? The last time he tried to push her, he pushed her all the way to Paris.

For awhile, there's just the sound of Dan telling some never-ending story in the dining room and the sound of Lily laughing happily in the kitchen and the sound of a woman crying to the accompaniment of swelling violins on the television.

"'_Anne Boleyn thought only with her heart and she got her head chopped off._'" Jenny says quietly.

He spares her a disdainful glance. "Are you having a seizure?"

"No, I am not having a seizure." She crosses her arms. "It's just the show and … something someone told me once."

He rolls his eyes and finishes his drink.

"Except … I don't buy it." She continues slowly. "Anne didn't get her head chopped off because she thought with her heart. She got her head chopped off because Henry didn't think with his."

"History according to Jenny Humphrey, ladies and gentlemen."

"I'm just saying … maybe Anne would have been fine thinking with her heart if Henry had gotten over himself and stopped being such a narcissistic coward."

_Chuck Bass: Coward._

His eyes are sharp and hard when they land on Jenny's face, but she doesn't flinch. She raises her eyebrows in a show of confusion while he searches past her caked on liner and fake lashes for a double meaning. She doesn't blink, but, he soon discovers, she doesn't have to. There's a brick wall waiting just behind her eyes to block him and, even if he could force his way through, he doesn't consider it worth the effort just to call her on what may or may not have been a veiled insult.

He stands up and walks back to the bar, keeping her in his line of sight. "You do realize this guy you hate so much has been dead for almost 500 years?"

"I don't hate him. I feel sorry for him."

Something in her tone makes his fist clench of its own accord.

He pours two fingers of scotch and starts back toward the dining room, where Lily and Eric have joined Dan and Serena at the table.

"Chuck, wait." Jenny hops off the sofa and cuts him off before he can take more than two steps. "Seriously, is Nate back yet? I've been trying to get in touch with him, but-"

"But he's not returning your calls?" Chuck mocks, feeling un-inclined to volunteer that he hasn't seen Nate in weeks, but his roommate's bags were sitting in the hall this morning, so it's a pretty good bet that he is, in fact, back.

"He doesn't get reception in Newport." She lifts her chin.

"Sure, he doesn't."

"Whatever." She sighs. "Don't tell me. I'll just stop by the Empire tomorrow."

"Someone needs to dust off her copy of The Rules." He mutters. "You really think stalking Nate is the best way to get him?"

"I think … I've done the waiting around for him thing and the way it turned out – pretty much sucked. If I have another shot here, I'm fighting for him. And I don't really care if you think that makes me a stalker."

_I will not be weak anymore._

There's an insult on the tip of his tongue, but it dies before he can open his mouth because he's thinking (not for the first time) that he really does get it: all of Blair's determination and none of her subtlety; all of Blair's drive and none of her discretion; all of Blair's force and none of her control.

He wants to tell Jenny that she's an idiot, but he can't quite form the words because, really, who is he to tell her anything? She may be an idiot, but Jenny is the one with all of Blair's fight and Chuck is the one with his skin turned inside out.

* * *

The elevator doors open to the sound of clinking glass.

He freezes until he remembers what he didn't feel compelled to share with Jenny tonight. A quick glance down the hall confirms that Nate's leather, Ralph Lauren bags are still sitting outside his door.

"Archibald?"

The first thing he sees when he rounds the corner into the living room is the frosted, decorative bowl from the coffee table - lying in scattered pieces on the floor.

"I was just -" Nate is down on his knees and reaching towards the shards of glass. "Sorry. I'm sorry –"

"It's a fucking knickknack, Nathaniel. Just don't cut yourself." He starts across the room, but Nate is already obediently scooting back towards the sofa.

With every step, the spicy smell of cognac gets stronger. Nate's head falls into his hands and it's obvious that he's drunk. The scene is eerily familiar. It's even less pretty on the outside looking in.

Chuck hadn't realized that he was steeled for a confrontation until he feels his jaw slowly unclenching.

"Vanderbilts run out of liquor?" He stoops down and grabs Nate under the arm, helping him up onto the sofa.

"Something like that." Nate slurs. "Listen, I don't expect you to be nice to me after-"

"Who's being nice?" Chuck leaves Nate sprawled on his stomach and cuts a path around the shattered glass. "I don't want you bleeding all over my penthouse."

"Fair enough." Nate's voice is muffled in the cushions.

The cognac decanter is open and half empty on the bar. He pours himself a glass and takes a long drink before replacing the cap.

"She picked Carter."

Or, at least, that's what it sounds like. Nate's voice is half lost in the back of the sofa.

"I thought I'd give her some time and maybe she'd come around, but … I stopped by the Waldorf's this morning when I got back and he – they were there. Together." Nate's words run together in a monotone. "She always picks him – last fall with the Buckley's. 10th grade when she couldn't be bothered to drop me a postcard from Connecticut, but she took him with him to Santorini-"

"To be fair, you weren't exactly single at the time." Chuck points out, making his way to the kitchen.

"I would have been if she had given me half a chance. I would have broken up with - I'm sorry, I know how that sounds and I did love her - you know I loved Blair. Just … not the way I love Serena. Not the way you love Blair – or the way I thought you …"

Chuck is absolutely silent while Nate rambles on and then trails off. He opens the refrigerator and stares inside, unseeing.

I care about three things, Nathaniel: money, the pleasures money brings me, and you.

"I love her more than I've ever loved anything." Chuck says finally, in a quiet voice. "Just so we're clear."

He pulls out a bottle of water and walks up behind Nate. "Drink this."

Nate ignores the bottle. "Tell me what happened with you and Blair."

He forces the bottle into Nate's hand. "Tell me what happened with you and Serena."

Nate tries to stare him down, but his eyes are bleary and it isn't long before he surrenders. "I screwed up. I did something … really bad."

Chuck snorts at the Golden Boy and the out-of-place look of guilt on his face. "I seriously doubt that."

"No, you don't know." He shakes his head.

"What, did you cheat on her?"

"I've cheated once in my life." Nate snaps. "No, of course, I didn't cheat on her … Why? Is that what you did to Blair?"

"I would never cheat on Blair." Chuck says in a dangerously low voice.

They sit in silence while Nate takes another gulp of water and Chuck crosses his arms.

Finally, Nate opens his mouth. "I – checked her phone –"

"Are you kidding me?" Chuck rolls his eyes at the confession. If he and Blair had broken up every time one of them checked the other's phone …

"I'm not done." Nate grits out. "I found a message from Carter, saying he was back in town and wanted to see her. He said he'd worked off his debt to the Buckley's ... but I guess they didn't consider it paid for some reason … I don't know. I didn't catch it all, but I did catch that… he was trying to stay under the radar because they were still looking for him. He gave her his room number at the Peninsula, so…"

"You deleted the message." Chuck supplies, still unimpressed with Nate's big transgression.

"No. I … didn't delete the message …" Nate shakes his head, lifting the bottle of water to his mouth and emptying at least a quarter of it before continuing. "I … called the Buckley's."

Chuck turns slowly and finds Nate watching for his reaction. With enormous effort, he maintains a neutral expression and Nate continues, dropping his eyes.

"They showed up at the Peninsula and - I don't know exactly how Carter got away or how he found out who tipped them off, but he did. Obviously. And he went running to Serena. He's been hiding out with her at the Waldorf's, but she's leaving town with him tomorrow."

He slides flat onto his back and covers his face with both arms. "I don't know why I did it. I mean, I do - Serena and I were finally together and I didn't want anything messing that up, but God, Chuck … for all I knew, the Buckley's wanted to kill him. And I didn't care. What kind of a person doesn't care about something like that?"

There's just the sound of the central air kicking on and off until Nate finally demands, "Say something."

It crawls through his veins to his chest and then up his throat and into his mouth until he can't hold it down anymore.

"I traded Blair for the Empire."

The seconds tick by while Nate remains completely motionless. Finally, he slowly lifts one arm. "I'm sorry?"

"You heard me."

He lifts his other arm and stares at Chuck, eyes suddenly looking a little less bleary. "Yeah … yeah, I did. But … what does that mean?"

"It means … Jack said he would sign over the Empire if I arranged for him to spend the night with Blair. And I- nothing ended up happening between them, but – I tricked her into it."

It's a sick kind of relief, saying it out loud.

It's so simple, really. In his head, it's so complicated – so many reasons and emotions and nuances and shades of gray. But now, the words are echoing in his ears, all of sudden, he can't find the gray anymore.

All of a sudden, he can't imagine why he ever expected Blair to stay – with him, in the city, in the state.

He traded her for the Empire.

"I wish I could take it back." The sentence slips out before he can weigh the truth of it, but it settles in his gut with a certainty that threatens to knock him over. Of course, it's true. He opens his mouth to feel the strange words a second time. "I'd trade the Empire to take it back-"

Before Chuck can finish his sentence, he finds himself pinned to the sofa. Nate's fist connects with his face, sharp and fast. Before he can react, he's free and Nate is stumbling back to the other side of the sofa.

"Fuck!" His hand flies reflexively to his nose, where he can feel the blood pouring out. "I can't believe you just fucking punched me!"

"I can't believe you fucking traded Blair for a hotel!" Nate, who can't quite keep his balance, is leaning against the back of the sofa. "Who does that?"

"I don't know, Nathaniel." Eyes watering, Chuck strains to his feet and staggers towards the kitchen. "The same kind of person who cheats on her with her best friend and then tries to have that best friend's ex-boyfriend murdered by a family of right wing nut jobs?"

"It's not the same."

"No, it's not." Chuck acknowledges after a few short beats because betrayal is betrayal is betrayal, but Nate is right. On some basic level, this was something else. Nate will serve a few years in pergatory; Chuck is going straight to a special part of hell.

Nate gives a long sigh. "But, granted -we're both disgusting."

As he searches for a towel, he reaches up to experimentally touch the bridge of his nose. He winces at the slight pressure. "Shit. I think you broke it."

Nate squints into the kitchen. "Probably too soon to tell. If you can't breathe through it tomorrow-"

"Perfect." Towel in hand, he opens the freezer and grabs as much ice as he can hold. He stares at the compress before turning back to Nate. "Is this – do I even want ice?"

"Keep the ice. Grab some tissue." Nate waves his hand dismissively. "Shit, I can't believe … that's why she broke up with you. And that's how you got this place back. And that's – did you give Jack a black eye?"

Chuck is grabbing for the Kleenex under the counter, but he freezes mid-reach. In all of his drugs and alcohol and angst, Jack's ongoing presence in New York hasn't crossed his mind in days.

"How did you know about that?"

"Through the magic of sight. He showed up at the Waldorf's every day for a week until Blair finally agreed to talk to him."

"What the hell did he want with her?" He picks up the box of tissues and wipes at the blood running into his mouth and down his chin.

"How should I know? We didn't realize she needed an armed guard to have a conversation with him." Nate reaches for the Kleenex box when Chuck approaches. "So … God, this is why Blair has been such a wreck and why – why she didn't buy a return ticket. Serena was all worked up about Blair never coming back, but I thought-"

"It's not like she has a choice." Chuck knows because he's spent the past three days cataloguing Blair's every conceivable option. In his absolute worst case, nightmare scenario, she stays in Paris until the end of August. "NYU starts up again in September and she'll have to be back by then."

"Yeah, if she comes back to NYU …" He hands Chuck two twisted pieces of tissue and motions for him to stick them up his nostrils.

He ignores Nate's directive, the throbbing in his nose suddenly overshadowed by the pounding in his chest. "What do you mean 'if'? What do you – do you know something?"

"Nothing definite. Just that her dad is friends with a guy in admissions at La Sorbonne. I guess he got her an interview, so she's thinking about-"

"She wouldn't." He says, feeling displaced from his own voice.

"Move to the fashion capital of the world to attend one of the most prestigious schools in Europe? You're right. That doesn't sound like Blair at all."

"No. I don't care." Somewhere in the back of his head, he hears himself, strained and panicked. "She still wouldn't move. She would never leave New York. She wouldn't-"

"Look, Chuck …" Nate reaches for the ice melting on the sofa and lifts it, almost gently, to Chuck's nose. "Harold and Eleanor both live in Paris now. She hates NYU. She and Serena are in the middle of another one of their cold wars and, after what you did … I'm sorry, but yeah, I think she would."

Chuck opens his mouth but he can't formulate a response.

Maybe she would.

But she can't.

His eyes flit around the room.

Blair has to come back if for no other reason than that her monogrammed day planner is open on his desk and her peppermint hand soap is lying by his sink and her bottle of dom perignon is sitting in his wine cabinet and her Burberry umbrella …

Something snaps.

"She can't." He wrenches away from the ice Nate is holding to his nose and stands up, Italian loafers crunching through broken glass on his way to his room.

"Of course she can."

Without another word, he closes his bedroom door behind him.

Nate is wrong and he has a wooden inlay jewelry box and thousands of dollars worth of dresses and a crystal perfume atomizer and a drawer full of diamond headbands to prove it.

* * *

"He's still asleep." Chuck says over his shoulder when he hears the elevator doors open, bleach blonde extensions visible in the corner of his eye.

"What happened to your nose?" Jenny's boots are heavy on the hard wood floor as she makes her way into the kitchen.

"Like I said … he's still asleep."

"No way." Jenny's laugh is surprised with an obnoxiously delighted tinge. She parks herself on a bar stool and reaches absently for the wallet on the counter. "Did he break it?"

"I don't think so." He motions towards the wallet in her hand. "And that's my wallet. No vintage photo IDs to feed your obsession in there."

"Stop it. Nate and I are friends." She says defensively. "And I told you I was going to stop by today."

He finishes his coffee in a few gulps while she glances around the room.

"Nate got new luggage." She says, mostly to herself, when her eyes land on the bags in the hall.

He grabs his suit jacket off the counter. "That's not Nate's luggage."

"No? Where are you going?"

"None of your business." He says, forgetting that Jenny is holding his wallet.

She immediately opens it and rifles through the bills until she finds a ticket.

"Seriously? Thailand?"

_Blair started, hand to her throat, when she finally noticed him next to her. It was cold enough to see the icy gasp leave her mouth. "How long have you been sitting there?"_

_"Awhile."_

_She smoothed her scarf. "I thought you'd be sleeping all day."_

_"I woke up at noon … with the irrepressible urge to feed some geese."_

_"Ducks." She smiled softly, setting her bag of breadcrumbs between them. "They're ducks."_

_"Ducks." He repeated, squinting at the breadcrumbs through dark tinted glasses. "So, how does one …?"_

_"Oh, it's very complicated." She said wryly, taking a handful of crumbs and tossing them towards the pond to demonstrate. She proceeded to nudge the bag against his leg until he grudgingly took a few crumbs of his own._

_"I wanted to thank you." He said quietly, watching the ducks swarm in on their food._

_"You don't have to thank me."_

_"Yes, I do." He took a deep breath, cold air burning from his throat down to his lungs. "If you hadn't been there last night-"_

_"It doesn't matter. Everything is fine. You're fine." She said as if trying to convince herself. A frown creased her forehead as she reached into the bag for another handful of crumbs. "You and your rooftops …"_

_"I know. It's a sickness." He gave a weak smile. "I need to invest in a safety net."_

_She stared intently at the ducks. "I'm your safety net, Bass."_

_It wasn't a boast and it wasn't a complaint. It was just a fact and, suddenly, he was overwhelmed with the desire to touch her. Instead, he placed his arm on the bench behind her. She leaned back into the pseudo embrace and he waited for her to look up at him._

_"Blair …"_

_"Yes?" The hope in her eyes made him ache._

_He wondered how much longer she would put up with this; how much longer she would wait for words he might very well be incapable of saying. He wondered how much longer it would be until she came to her senses and left him without a safety net._

_He pressed his lips lightly to the side her head and felt her melt into the caress._

_Maybe a little longer._

_"I'm so fucked up right now, Blair." He whispered. "But … this isn't who I want to be. This isn't who I'm going to be. Things are going to get better and maybe …"_

_("Maybe in the future")_

_"I know." She huddled a little closer and they sat with her head not quite on his shoulder and his arm not quite wrapped around her._

_After awhile, he sighed. "They're reading the will tomorrow."_

_"God, I hadn't even thought of that ..." She breathed. "Are you going?"_

_"I don't think I have a choice." He reached into the bag and pulled out more crumbs, pouring half into her waiting hand and keeping half. "I'd rather know sooner than later If he disinherited me or-"_

_"What? What are you talking about?"_

_"I don't know." He threw the crumbs in his hand a few feet away and watched as the ducks swarmed closer. "I just have a bad feeling."_

_It was a creeping anxiety, inching down his back. There was no discernable reason for it, but it had been there all morning, along with his hangover, rubbing his nerves raw._

_"Bart loved you. He worked everything out. I'm sure of it."_

_One duck went waddling back into the water and Chuck watched it swim in circles, pondering the certainty in Blair's voice and wishing he could borrow a fraction of it._

_"You could come tomorrow." He said it with all the offhandedness he could muster, but, to his ears, it still came out sounding like a desperate plea._

_He couldn't remember the last time he had asked anyone for anything without offering a monetary incentive and it left his mouth dry, putting himself in a position to be refused by Blair. After everything he had put her through, he was convinced that she must be nearing her limit._

_He couldn't make himself look at her, but he could feel her eyes on him._

_"You want me to come to the reading of the will?"_

_"I wouldn't mind having you there." He shrugged, as if he didn't particularly care one way or the other. "Unless you have plans-"_

_"If you want me to be there, I'll be there."_

_"It's probably going to last all morning." He pointed out, feeling uncomfortably needy._

_"I'll take a sick day."_

_"You might have to go all the way to Financial District. The attorney's office-"_

_"All the way to Financial District? Nevermind then." She teased gently, reaching for her purse._

_"Just – between rush hour and missing class… I understand if -"_

_He stopped short when she placed a thick piece of paper in his hand._

_"What is this?"_

_"It's a plane ticket." She said simply._

_He stared in confusion at the destination printed in the right hand corner. "It's a plane ticket … to Thailand."_

_"I bought it last week." She stood, straightening her coat, fussing with her gloves, avoiding his eyes. "I was just sitting here, waiting, going crazy, and I didn't understand what the hell was taking Jack so long, so …I know you said not to look for you, but …"_

_He exhaled incredulously, remembering how superfluous those words had felt when he had scribbled them. It was the sort of thing Nate could have said, Serena could have said with a straight face, but, when Chuck wrote 'Don't come looking for me', it was all he could do not to rip up the note and start over._

_The fact was, he had never really expected Blair to come looking for him. He had kept the sentence mostly out of a self aggrandizing need to prove it was necessary (a pathetic need to tell his future self that she would have come looking if he hadn't asked her not to)._

_"I can't believe …" He clutched the ticket in his hands, gaping in amazement. "You were really going to go all the way to Bangkok?"_

_"I would have gone further." She looked down, reassuring him with her eyes. "Let me know where and I'll meet you tomorrow."_

"No, I am not going to Thailand." He snatches the wrinkled ticket back from Jenny and folds it carefully along the tattered crease.

She silently hands the wallet over and he tucks the old ticket safely inside, next to the silver pin sticking through the leather. "That's … just something I found last night."

Something that brought him crashing to his senses while he was tearing his room apart in search of a wooden inlay jewelry box and a crystal perfume atomizer.

Once upon a time, he told Blair not to come looking for him and she bought a ticket to Thailand anyway; refused to sit and wait and go crazy. And no, he's not Blair - not by a long shot - and yes, Gossip Girl, yes Jenny, yes Bart, yes God, he is a narcissistic coward. But that isn't who he wants to be. That isn't who he's going to be.

His phone beeps and he looks down to see that the Bass jet is fueled and waiting.

When he looks up, Jenny is smiling a little smugly. "You're going to Paris, aren't you?"

* * *

**Author's Note (9/14/12): **

**Dear Readers – **

**You are wonderful. Truly. The feedback I have received from this story has flattered me, inspired me, and validated my lifelong interest in writing. I have read (and will continue to read) every comment. Your kind words have meant the world to me. **

**This chapter was not initially intended to end **_**Tape Ain't Gonna Fix It**_**. But two years later, I must confess the obvious – that this chapter is the last. In retrospect, it seems appropriate to end on this note – a glimmer of hope, in which Chuck transitions from passive sulker into active pursuer. The driving motivation behind this story was my desire to reveal Chuck, to see him grow up, appreciate Blair in all her complexity and start down the path of making amends. In the beginning, I planned to follow him further down that long and twisty path, but I still believe I accomplished the spirit of what I set out to accomplish. ****I am content leaving this story with Chuck on his way to Paris, on the verge of true growth and ready to fight for Blair. I hope you are too. If not, I hope you will forgive me and understand that, thanks in part to your encouragement, I am now focused on my own original writing. Between my shifted priorities and the direction **_**Gossip Girl**_** has taken since Season 3, completion of my initial storyline is no longer possible.**

**I still have a soft spot for this story and the **_**Gossip Girl**_** fandom. I have no intention of taking _Tape Ain't Gonna Fix it_ offline. I very much hope these chapters are enjoyable on their own. Thank you so much for reading and welcoming my little contribution into this community. I appreciate it more than you know. **


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